УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ
«Брестский государственный университет имени А.С. Пушкина»
LINGUISTICS. FIRST STEPS
ТЕОРЕТИЧЕСКАЯ ЛИНГВИСТИКА
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Учебно-методическое пособие
для студентов математического факультета
специальности 1-02 05 01 «Информатика. Иностранный
язык (английский)» и исторического факультета
специальности 1-02 01 02-04 «История. Иностранный язык
(английский)»
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Брест
БрГУ имени А.С. Пушкина
2012
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Автор:
Е.Г. Сальникова – доцент кафедры иностранных языков второй
специальности учреждения образования «Брестский государственный
университет имени А.С. Пушкина», кандидат филологических наук,
доцент
Рецензенты:
А.Н. Гарбалев – кандидат филологических наук, заведующий
кафедрой иностранных языков с методикой преподавания учреждения
образования «Брестский государственный университет имени А.С.
Пушкина»
А.Ф. Трифонюк – кандидат психологических наук, доцент
кафедры иностранных языков экономических специальностей
учреждения образования «Брестский государственный технический
университет»
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С.Н. Ткач – старший преподаватель кафедры информатики и
прикладной математики, заместитель декана математического
факультета учреждения образования «Брестский государственный
университет имени А.С. Пушкина»
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В учебно-методическое пособие включены 7 тем, соответствующие
стандартной программе данного курса для гуманитарных факультетов.
Учитывая то, что пособие разработано для студентов негуманитарного
профиля, информация подается в сжатом упрощенном виде. В отличие от стандартных курсов материал данного пособия представлен на
английском языке и преследует дополнительную цель развития навыков слушания, чтения и говорения у студентов, изучающих английский
язык в качестве второй специальности. Каждая тема включает в себя
разработки для семинарских занятий и материал для самостоятельного
изучения студентами.
Предназначено для студентов математического и исторического факультетов университета, изучающих иностранный язык как вторую специальность.
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СОДЕРЖАНИЕ
Примерный тематический план . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Theme 1 Linguistics as a science
1.1 Lecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1.1 What is language? . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1.2 What is Linguistics? . . . . . . . . . .
1.1.3 Beginnings of modern linguistics . . .
1.1.4 Characterization of linguistics today
1.1.5 Aspects of language study . . . . . .
1.1.6 Other Disciplines . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1.7 Directions in linguistics . . . . . . . .
1.1.8 Schools of thought . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 Seminar I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2.1 Linguistics as a science . . . . . . . . .
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Theme 2 Language and thought
2.1 Lecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.1 Functions of Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.2 The “triangle of meaning” . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.3 Language and Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2 Seminar II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.1 Functions of Language. Language and Thinking
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Theme 3 Language and speech, writing
3.1 Lecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1.1 Language and speech . . . . . .
3.1.2 Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1.3 Logographic writing systems .
3.1.4 Ideogram . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1.5 Syllabic writing systems . . . .
3.1.6 Alphabetic writing systems . .
3.1.7 Directionality . . . . . . . . . .
3.2 Seminar III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2.1 Language and Speech. Writing
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Theme 4 Language and Society
4.1 Lecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1.1 Dialect vs. language. Standard norm.
Dialectology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1.2 Regional, social and stylistic varieties
4.2 Seminar IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2.1 Language and Society . . . . . . . . . .
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Theme 5 World languages
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5.1 Lecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.1.1 Origin of language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
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5.1.2 History of research . . . . .
5.1.3 Classification of languages
5.1.4 Language families . . . . . .
5.2 Seminar V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2.1 World Languages . . . . . .
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Theme 6 History of the English language
6.1 Lecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.1.1 The Development of English . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.1.2 Modern state of the English language. Variants
of English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2 The English Language: Evolution and Modern State .
6.2.1 Seminar VI
The history of English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2.2 Seminar VII
Borrowings in English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2.3 Seminar VIII
Modern state of English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2.4 Seminar IX
British versus American English . . . . . . . . . .
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Theme 7 Language as a system and as a structure
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7.1 Lecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
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7.1.1 The Notion of a Sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.1.2 The Concept of Arbitrariness . . . . . . . .
7.1.3 Originality of the Language as a System
of Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.1.4 Signs and Language Units . . . . . . . . . . .
7.1.5 Language as a system and as a structure .
7.2 Seminar X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.2.1 Language as a System and Structure . . . .
Dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Вопросы к экзамену по разделу «Теоретическая лингвистика»
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ТЕМАТИЧЕСКИЙ ПЛАН
№
Название темы занятия, перечень изучаемых вопросов
ЛК
1
Строение науки о языке. Общее и частное, теоретическое и
практическое языкознание. Лингвистика в системе наук. Язык
и социальные науки (этнография, социология; филология, герменевтика; история; психология; теория информации и др.)
Функции языка; язык и мышление. Язык как общественное явление. Коммуникативная функция языка. Экспрессивная функция языка. Познавательная функция языка. Структура коммуникативного акта (К. Шеннон, Р. Якобсон). Язык и мышление. Проблема соотношения между речевыми и мыслительными
процессами. Вербальное и невербальное мышление. Гипотеза Э.
Сэпира - Б. Уорфа
Язык, речевая деятельность, письмо. Язык и речь. Различение
языка как системы (кода) и речи как процесса. Речевая деятельность как совокупность процессов говорения и понимания;
сообщение как ее продукт. Письмо как особая семиотическая
система, отличная от звукового языка. История письма. Типы
письма.
2
2
3
2
ПР
2
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4
5
6
7
Язык и общество. Социальное и территориальное расслоение
языка. Языковая норма в ее соотношении с языковой системой
в целом. Типы языковой нормы. Узус. Литературный язык и
его стили. Арго, жаргон. Сознательное воздействие общества на
язык. Языковая политика. Языковая политика в многоязычных
странах.
Языки мира. История проблемы происхождения языка (глоттогенеза); современное состояние (языкознание, археология, антропология, зоопсихология о глоттогенезе). Живые и мертвые
языки. Языки и диалекты. Классификации языков: генеалогическая, типологическая, ареальная. Основные семьи языков.
Эволюция английского языка. Староанглийский язык. Английский язык в Средние века. Современный английский: взаимодействия и лингвистические заимствования. Эволюция английского языка. Английский как язык международного общения.
Варианты английского языка. Американский английский и британский английский.
Система и структура языка. Язык как система знаков. Система и структура языка. Особенности внутренней организации
языка. Парадигматические и синтагматические отношения. Понятие уровня языковой структуры. Основные единицы языка:
уровнеобразующие и неуровнеобразующие, знаковые и незнаковые.
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2
2
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6
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THEME
1
Linguistics as a science
1.1
. Lecture
1.1.1
. What is language?
As soon as we try to learn a language, we come up against the most fundamental
questions about the nature of language. What is ’language’ ? How should we set about
learning a language? One cannot teach or learn a language for long without being faced
with some of the great puzzles about the nature of language that have baffled the great
thinkers since antiquity. Even the youngest pupil may sometimes present his teacher with
the most profound issues: How long will it take us to learn the whole language? Are all the
words in the dictionary? Why are there so many exceptions? The ’theory’ of language
with which the teacher operates may not be consciously formulated; but it is hardly
imaginable that a language could be taught without some underlying conception of the
general nature of language.
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1.1.2
. What is Linguistics?
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It endeavours to answer the question–
what is language and how is represented in the mind? Linguists focus on describing and
explaining language and are not concerned with the prescriptive rules of the language (ie.,
do not split infinitives). Linguists are not required to know many languages and linguists
are not interpreters.
The underlying goal of the linguist is to try to discover the universals concerning
language. That is, what are the common elements of all languages. The linguist then
tries to place these elements in a theoretical framework that will describe all languages
and also predict what can not occur in a language.
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Linguistics is a social science that shares common ground with other social sciences
such as psychology, anthropology, sociology and archaeology. It also may influence other
disciplines such as English, communication studies and computer science. Linguistics
for the most part though can be considered a cognitive science. Along with psychology,
philosophy and computer science (AI), linguistics is ultimately concerned with how the
human brain functions.
Below are several different disciplines within linguistics. The fields of phonetics,
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and language acquisition are considered the
core fields of study and a firm knowledge of each is necessary in order to tackle more
advanced subjects.
Linguistics constitutes the most systematic study of language at our disposal. The
obvious reason, then, for considering the role of linguistics in relation to language teaching
is that both in different ways have to do with language. It would be unreasonable
for language teaching theory to disregard what linguistics has to say about language.
Whether the teacher accepts what the linguist has to offer and how the relationship to
linguistics is best regulated is another matter.
1.1.3
. Beginnings of modern linguistics
Linguistics as an independent field of study, a university discipline with different
specializations within it and areas of application, with its own professional organizations,
journals, and scholarly meetings, is a creation of the twentieth century, and more specially
a phenomenon of the period after World War II. The study of language is of course not
at all new; it goes back many centuries to Greek and Roman antiquity and biblical times.
Indeed many of the concepts we use today in the language classroom as simple technical
terms of language instruction such as ’gender’, ’number’, ’case’, or ’person’, ultimately
derive from Greek and medieval linguistic philosophy. But in past ages questions about
the nature of language were studied as part of other scholarly activities, in connection
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with philosophy, theology, rhetoric, and not unexpectedly the teaching of Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew.
It was from the late eighteenth century that language in general and languages other
than the great classical ones, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, became objects of scientific
enquiry. Historical and comparative linguistics attempted to describe and explain the
historical changes which languages undergo and to build up scientifically attested
knowledge of the evolution of languages and dialects and the relations among them. In
1906, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure was asked to offer a course in ’general
linguistics’ at the University of Geneva where he had previously taught Sanskrit and
comparative philology. He offered the course three times, for the last time in 1910—1911.
He died in 1913, without having written any book or monograph on general linguistics.
Two of his former students, however, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, published
in 1916 the Cours de Linguistique Generate de Ferdinand de Saussure on the basis of
notes taken by students during the three courses. The book by Bally and Sechehaye is
considered by most linguists today as the work that has initiated modern linguistics. It
defines the nature of language and sets out principles of language study.
1.1.4
. Characterization of linguistics today
Linguistics is usually defined as ’the science of language’ or ’the systematic study of
language’. As a science it cultivates a rational outlook upon language. The linguist takes
an objective view of language and all linguistic phenomena. In that respect linguistics
follows the tradition set by the study of comparative philology in the nineteenth century.
But it differs from the approach to language often cultivated in schools. Educators
frequently recognize the ’good’ or ’bad’, the ’right’ or ’wrong’ in language: ’French is
a beautiful language.’ ’Language X sounds ugly.’ Linguists do not deny that language use
has a strongly emotional component and that language can be valued aesthetically. But
as linguists they study language and reflect on it in a detached and dispassionate way:
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’This is the way Lx functions.’ ’This is a characteristic of all languages.’ and so on.
Linguistics is a theoretical science. It formulates explanations which are designed to
account for the phenomena of language. For many linguistic scholars the central purpose
of linguistics is the development of theories on aspects of language and a general theory
of language.
Linguistics is not only theoretical. It is also an empirical science making detailed
observations on particular languages to confirm or refute generalizations. Linguistics,
therefore, observes and analyses data found in natural languages, following the general
principles of empirical research procedures. Linguistics is accordingly not only a theoretical
but also a descriptive discipline.
These two characteristics are in no way antithetical; on the contrary, they support each
other. But the emphasis on theory or description has varied among the scholars. Some
regard the descriptive tasks as the primary object of linguistics. Linguistics is for them
a largely ’taxonomic’ science like botany, concerned with the identification and ordering
of many observations—of plants in botany or language data in linguistics. Others regard
the theoretical statements about language, the discovery of language ’universals’, and,
thus, the creation of an understanding of the essential nature of language as the most
important preoccupation of linguists.
Synchronic versus diachronic treatment
In the nineteenth century the dominant approach to any scientific study of language
was historical. Saussure was the first to formulate clearly an alternative approach, namely
that a language can and should also be studied at a particular point in time with an
emphasis on how the different parts of the language hang together and interact. He
therefore advocated that the ’diachronic’ or evolutionary approach be matched by a
static or ’synchronic’ study of a given state of the language. Twentieth century linguistic
studies are characterized by the predominance of synchronic treatment.
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1.1.5
. Aspects of language study
Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of the production and perception of speech sounds. It is
concerned with the sounds of language, how these sounds are articulated and how the
hearer perceives them. Phonetics is related to the science of acoustics in that it uses
much the same techniques in the analysis of sound that acoustics does. There are three
sub-disciplines of phonetics:
• Articulatory Phonetics: the production of speech sounds.
• Acoustic Phonetics: the study of the physical production and transmission of
speech sounds.
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• Auditory Phonetics: the study of the perception of speech sounds.
Phonology
Phonology is the study of the sound patterns of language. It is concerned with how
sounds are organized in a language. Phonology examines what occurs to speech sounds
when they are combined to form a word and how these speech sounds interact with each
other. It endeavors to explain what these phonological processes are in terms of formal
rules.
Morphology
Morphology is the study of word formation and structure. It studies how words are
put together from their smaller parts and the rules governing this process. The elements
that are combining to form words are called morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest
unit of meaning you can have in a language. The word cats, for example, contains the
morphemes cat and the plural -s.
Syntax
Syntax is the study of sentence structure. It attempts to describe what is grammatical
in a particular language in term of rules. These rules detail an underlying structure and
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a transformational process. The underlying structure of English for example would have
a subject-verb-object sentence order (John hit the ball). The transformational process
would allow an alteration of the word order which could give you something like The ball
was hit by John.
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It is concerned with describing how we represent
the meaning of a word in our mind and how we use this representation in constructing
sentences. Semantics is based largely on the study of logic in philosophy.
Language Acquisition
Language acquisition examines how children learn to speak and how adults learn a
second language. Language acquisition is very important because it gives us insight in
the underlying processes of language. There are two components which contribute to
language acquisition. The innate knowledge of the learner (called Universal Grammar or
UG) and the environment. The notion of UG has broad implications. It suggests that all
languages operate within the same framework and the understanding of this framework
would contribute greatly to the understanding of what language is.
1.1.6
. Other Disciplines
• Sociolinguistics: Sociolinguistics is the study of interrelationships of language and
social structure, linguistic variation, and attitudes toward language.
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• Neurolinguistics: Neurolinguistics is the study of the brain and how it functions
in the production, perception and acquisition of language.
• Historical Linguistics: Historical linguistics is the study of language change and
the relationships of languages to each other.
• Anthropological Linguistics: Anthropological linguistics is the study of language
and culture and how they interact.
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• Pragmatics: Pragmatics studies meaning in context.
1.1.7
. Directions in linguistics
Linguistics has advanced in two main directions. One is the detailed study of the
different branches of specializations, for example, phonetics or syntax. The other is the
study of language as a whole, the attempt to discover how the different parts of language
interact and how the total language as a ’system of systems’ can best be grasped.
Linguistics has thus faced the dual problem of precise analysis down to the simplest unit
while at the same time keeping sight of the general pattern of language which enables
the linguist to provide a synthesis of the many features of a language.
1.1.8
. Schools of thought
The expansion of knowledge in so many directions has led, since the thirties down to
the present, to several attempts to make a synthesis and to develop a unified theory of
language. Several schools of thought have emerged round a few prominent linguists (for
example, Bloomfield, Firth, Halliday, Hjelmslev, or Chomsky), major centers of linguistic
study (for example, Prague School, Geneva School, American Structuralism, London (or
British) School, Copenhagen School), and leading concepts (for example, structuralism,
transformational generative grammar, generative semantics, speech act theory).
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1.2
. Seminar I
1.2.1
. Linguistics as a science
I. Consider your answers to the following.
1. What is linguistics? What is its main goal?
2. Speak about the history of linguistics as a science.
3. What is the state of linguistics today? Is it a theoretical or empirical science?
4. Explain the difference between synchronic and diachronic treatments of language.
What trends of linguistics do they coincide with?
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5. Describe the aspects of language study.
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6. What social sciences does linguistics have relations with?
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II. Render the following text in English. Speak about interconnections between
linguistics and mathematics.
Связь языковедения с другими науками
Язык связан со всей совокупностью чувственного и мыслительного поведения
человека, с его организацией как живого существа (природными условиями его жизни), с его бытом, с обществом, в котором живет человек, с его творчеством – техническим, умственным, художественным, с историей человеческого общества, поэтому
и наука о языке, лингвистика, связана с очень многими науками: точными, естественными и гуманитарными.
Самое сложное – это выяснить отношения лингвистики и математики. Часто
повторяют мнение о том, что любая наука лишь в той степени может называться
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“наукой”, сколько в ней есть математики. Действительно, точность (основное качество науки в отличие вообще от знания чего-либо) математики – это идеал научного знания. Но точность не исчерпывается математикой, чему свидетельствуют
успехи общественных наук во второй половине XIX и в XX в., умение предсказания в лингвистике (например, применение сравнительного метода в романистике,
подтвердив-шееся письменными памятниками вульгарной латыни, гипотезы де Соссюра, подтвердившиеся открытием хеттского языка) и многое другое, где математика не применялась.
Однако научный идеал математики как образца наук остается бесспорным.
Кроме того, в XX в. многие математики и целые математические школы сумели
себя применить не только в точных науках, например в физике (что уже давно себя
оправдало) и в технике, но и в гуманитарных науках, откуда возникли эконометрика (применение математических методов в экономике), математическая логика,
математическая лингвистика и т.д.
О “математической лингвистике” следует поговорить особо. В XX в. возникла
особая дисциплина: математическая логика, которая широко использовала лингвистические понятия синтаксиса, предложения, слова. Математическая логика – это
особый раздел математики. То же самое надо сказать и о математической лингвистике, которая является не “особой лингвистикой”, а лишь применением к языковым
явлениям математических методов. Главным образом, это относится к речи, а не
к языку, например применение теории вероятностей и математической статистики
(сама же математическая статистика – не особый раздел статистики, а тоже применение математических методов к статистике).
Применение методов математической статистики позволяет объективно и экономно определить объем словника для определенного типа словаря, например словаря русского языка для национальных школ; дать для техники связи показатели
частотности употребления звуков русской или иной речи путем статистического анализа встречаемости звуков и звукосочетаний определенных текстов; так же можно
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получить интересные результаты при анализе звукового состава стихотворного и
прозаического текста.
(А.А. Реформатский "Введение в языкознание")
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SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Aspects of language study
The basic problem for linguistics – as for language teaching – is how to come to grips
with this vast totality that we call a language. We can hopefully represent it as a “system”
or “structure”. But to make the system or structure accessible, visible, and learnable is
quite another matter. It is clear that a scientific approach demands some ordering and
restricting of the events to be investigated. Which aspects of language need the most
intensive study? What construct or model would reveal most clearly and economically
the structure of language and its parts? How do different parts relate to each other?
What concepts are needed in language description? In trying to answer these questions,
linguistics sets out from simple concepts which are quite familiar to language teachers,
and even to the layman as a language user, such as “speech sound”, “word”, “sentence”,
“meaning”, and “text”. These common-sense features correspond roughly to the major
areas of linguistic investigation and each is represented in one or the other of the branches
of linguistics:
1
2
3
4
5
speech sounds
in phonetics and phonology
words
in lexicology, semantics, and morphology
sentences
in syntax
meaning
in semantics
text (dialogue, narrative, poem) in discourse analysis
In the course of the twentieth century the scientific emphasis has gradually shifted
from the study of speech sounds (phonetics and phonology) to grammar (morphology and
syntax) then to meaning (semantics) and the study of texts (discourse analysis). Linguists
have of course always been aware of the fact that in language all aspects are involved.
But the answer to the question which it is necessary or most rewarding to investigate
scientifically has varied in emphasis over the decades. But there has been a cumulative
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development so that one may find today that, collectively, there are scholars interested
in any of these aspects.
Phonology
It is understandable that, in the early stages of modern linguistics, the most noticeable
features of language, the speech sounds, were the first to be studied in the new science
which had to find out how to study language empirically. Today phonetics and phonology
are two well established sub-disciplines of linguistics or are considered disciplines in
their own right. A distinction between phonetics and phonology has gradually emerged.
Phonetics studies the articulatory and acoustic phenomena which make it possible to
produce and perceive speech sounds. It provides us with a tool, a set of descriptive
terms, by which we can describe, as minutely as is necessary for the task in hand, a
particular physical sound and the gestures which produce it. Phonetics studies speech
sounds as such regardless of particular language systems. In methods and concepts it
draws on a wide range of relevant disciplines, including anatomy, physiology, physics,
and psychology. Phonology is a more strictly linguistic discipline which investigates
the sound systems of particular languages and develops general principles applicable
to the sound systems of all languages. Phonology is less concerned with the analysis of
concrete and individual manifestations of sounds (phones), the performance, or parole
element produced by different speakers than with the systematic distinctions, the langue
or competence element, produced by the meaning-carrying sound units (phonemes) which
characterize the sound systems of particular languages. Phonetics can be considered
as helpful to pronunciation teaching in that it provides the teacher with a diagnostic
understanding of how speech sounds are produced. Phonology is needed to understand
what constitutes the sound system of a particular language.
Grammar
During a major part of the twentieth century, approximately between 1925 and 1965,
linguistics gave attention increasingly to the second theme, grammar, which proved
to be one of the most productive and most controversial areas for linguistic analysis.
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Grammar, a somewhat ambiguous term today, has been defined as “that branch of the
description of languages which accounts for the way in which words combine to form
sentences”. It is traditionally divided into morphology and syntax. Morphology studies
the internal structure of the forms of words, while syntax is the study of sentence
structure. In older school grammars morphology usually received extensive treatment,
whereas syntax was given only limited coverage. In recent linguistic studies the roles
have been reversed; morphology has tended to receive less attention than syntax. The
importance of grammar will hardly be questioned by teachers. Most language courses and
textbooks are organized along grammatical criteria. Language teachers for generations
have operated with grammatical concepts and categories which have been considered as a
self-evident and simple basis of language. It is often handled in school in an authoritarian
manner, and children are sometimes chided for “not knowing their grammar”.
Over a period of about forty years, linguists have taken a fresh look at grammar
and have attempted to rethink grammatical analysis from first principles. A review of
modern grammatical theories reveals an extraordinary variety of different systems. For
language pedagogy, as we shall see later, the shifts of categories, concepts, terminologies,
emphases, and approaches have been confusing and frustrating. At the same time these
changes have created a sense of the complexity of grammar, counteracting the views of
grammar as simple and self-evident. Instead, they are an invitation to teachers to treat
the grammar of a second language as a puzzling and challenging phenomenon and as a
subject of worthwhile and fascinating study.
Lexicology
Lexicology, the study of lexis or vocabulary, apart from its treatment under morphology
as a sequence of morphemes, has received relatively little systematic attention, at least
from English-speaking linguists. It has received somewhat more in Germany and in
French-speaking countries. One reason for its relative neglect may well be that it does
not lend itself easily to the structural and systematic treatment in the way syntax
and phonology have done. Another may be that the formal analysis of words has been
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absorbed by morphology and the study of word meaning by semantics. Yet, for language
instruction, lexicography, and other practical activities a systematic understanding of
lexis is important, and the neglect is all the more curious and unjustified. During the
interwar years, largely outside the framework of linguistics, a number of word frequency
studies in English, French, German, and Spanish were undertaken by educationists and
psychologists to meet the need for vocabulary control in schoolbooks and language
courses. Because of the importance of some form of ordering of lexis in language teaching,
lexicological studies have come more into prominence since the fifties. But they have not
been integrated into linguistic theory in the way syntax and phonology have been nor
have they given rise to much imaginative and searching theorizing.
Semantics
Semantics, the study of meaning, as a distinct field of investigation has a history
of over a hundred years. Yet, linguistics in its recent history has approached semantics
with great caution and for a period had rejected it almost completely as a study within
the framework of linguistics. Between about 1930 and 1955 many linguists, particularly
in America, argued that linguistics should confine itself to the study of the observable
linguistic forms so much so that one linguist, Charles Fries, complained that for many
students of linguistics meaning had almost become anathema. Linguists have never denied
that it is the essence of language to be meaningful. The question was whether meaning was
a proper subject for scientific enquiry. During the sixties it was increasingly recognized
that, since language cannot function without meaning, linguistics must pay attention to
the problem of meaning. But the questions of meaning which relate words and sentences
to each other and to “states, processes, and objects in the universe” are so complex that
they deserve special consideration. Once this was recognized the interest in semantics
and in the relationship between semantics and other branches of linguistics grew rapidly.
Discourse
The field of linguistic study has for long been bounded at one end by the concept
of the sound and at the other by the concept of the sentence. Recent work in syntax
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and semantics has made it clear that linguistic investigation can no longer treat the
sentence as the ultimate unit. “Language does not occur in stray words or sentences, but in
connected discourse”. Since about 1970 linguistics has moved towards the study of aspects
of language beyond the sentence through discourse analysis. To a certain extent, this is no
more than a move in language teaching from isolated sentences to connected text passages,
dialogues, descriptions, and narratives. However, simultaneously linguists have been led
to the realization that language cannot be studied in isolation from the communicative
intentions of language users and the context within which they use language.
Linguistic as a Science (presentation)
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THEME
2
Language and thought
2.1
. Lecture
2.1.1
. Functions of Language
There exist different points of view as to the nature of the language. Is it a biological,
psychical or social phenomenon? And the scientists give various answers to this question.
Some scholars (A. Muller, W. Schleicher) considered the language to be a biological
phenomenon, other linguists (H. Steintal, W. Humboldt, A. Potebnya) consider it as a
psychical phenomenon. Nowadays in modern linguistics there is a predominating point
of view that the language is a social phenomenon. And there are certain grounds for this
view. Language cannot be inherited; it can be gained in the course of human’s life.
Functions of language can prove the fact that it is a social phenomenon because
functions reveal the language essence. Thus they characterize the language. The main
functions of the language are:
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• communicative (as a means of communication);
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• cognitive (as a means of thinking and cognition);
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• emotive (for expressing feelings and emotions);
• metalingual (as a means of language investigation);
We should also distinguish the secondary functions of the language. They are:
• phatic (as a means of establishing the contact);
• conative (assimilation);
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• voluntative;
• historical / cultural (the preservation of culture, history, etc.)
2.1.2
. The “triangle of meaning”
The only relationships between the words you use and the things they represent are
those which exist in people’s thoughts. It is quite possible for two of us to look at the
same object but give it different meanings. If you are to be a successful communicator,
you should understand the relationships that exist between words and people’s thoughts
and reactions.
The “triangle of meaning” (семантический треугольник) developed by two
communication theorists C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards helps explain how language
works.
Generally speaking, meaning can be more or less described as a component of the
word through which a concept is communicated, in this way endowing the word with the
ability of denoting real objects, qualities, actions and abstract notions. The complex and
somewhat mysterious relationships between referent (object, etc. denoted by the word),
concept and word are traditionally represented by the following triangle:
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By the "symbol"here is meant the word; thought or reference is concept. The dotted
line suggests that there is no immediate relation between word and referent: it is established
only through the concept.
On the other hand, there is a hypothesis that concepts can only find their realization
through words. It seems that thought is dormant till the word wakens it up. It is only
when we hear a spoken word or read a printed word that the corresponding concept
springs into mind.
The relations between language and thought can be presented as two intersecting
circles. We can’t refer all thought elements to language and vice versa.
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2.1.3
. Language and Thinking
Everyday experience suggests that much of our thinking is facilitated by language,
which proves the closest relationship between language and thought.
The thinking which involves language is of a different kind: this is the reasoned
thinking which takes place as we work out problems, tell stories, plan strategies, and
so on. It is «rational», «directed», «logical», or «propositional» thinking which involves
deductive (when we solve problems by using a given set of rules, as in an arithmetical
task) and inductive (when we solve problems on the basis of data placed before us, as
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in working out a travel route) elements. Language seems to be very important for this
kind of thinking. The formal properties of language, such as word order and sentence
sequencing, constitute the medium in which our connected thoughts can be presented
and organized.
The problem of relationship between language and thought is seen in terms of two
extremes. First, there is the hypothesis that language and thought are totally separate
entities, with one being dependent on the other. At the opposite extreme, there is the
hypothesis that language and thought are identical — that it is not possible to engage in
any rational thinking without using language.
Within the first position, there are two possibilities: language might be dependent
upon thought, or thought might be dependent upon language. The traditional view
supports the first of these: people have thoughts, and then they put these thoughts into
words. It is summarized in such metaphorical views of language as the «dress» or «tool»
of thought. The view is well represented in the field of child language acquisition, where
children are seen to develop a range of cognitive abilities, which precede the learning of
language.
The second possibility has also been widely held: the way people use language dictates
the lines along which they can think. This view is also represented in the language
acquisition field, in the argument that the child’s earliest encounters with language are
the main influence on the way concepts are learned. The most influential expression of
this position, however, is found in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
A third possibility, which is also widely held these days, is that language and thought
are interdependent — but they are identical. The identity view that thought is no more
than an internalized vocalization is no longer common. There are too many exceptions
for such a strong position to be maintained: we need think only of the various kinds of
mental operations which we can perform without language, such as recalling a sequence of
movements in a game or sport, or visualizing the route from home to work. It is also widely
recognized that pictorial images and physical models are helpful in problem-solving, and
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may be more efficient than purely verbal representations of a problem.
On the other hand, these cases are far outnumbered by those where language seem to
be the main means whereby successful thinking can proceed. To see language and thought
as interdependent, then, is to recognize that language is a regular part of the process of
thinking, at the same time recognizing that we have to think in order to understand
language. It is not a question of one notion taking precedence over the other, but of both
notions being essential, if we are to explain behaviour. Once again, people have searched
for metaphors to express their views. Language has been likened to the arch of a tunnel;
thought, to the tunnel itself. But the complex structure and function of language defies
such simple analogies.
The romantic idealism of the late 18th century in the views of Johann Herder (17441803) and Wilhelm von Humboldt (1762-1835) placed great value on the diversity of the
world’s languages and cultures. The tradition was supported by the American linguist
and anthropologist Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and his pupil Benjamin Lee Whorf (18971941), and resulted in a view about the relation between language and thought which
was widely influential in the middle decades of the previous century.
The “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” combines two principles. The first is known as linguistic
determinism which states that language determines the way we think. The second follows
from this, and is known as linguistic relativity and states that the distinctions encoded in
one language are not found in any other language. In a much-quoted paragraph, Whorf
states the view as follows:
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and
types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare
every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux
of impressions which has to be organized by our minds — and this means largely by the
linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe
significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in
this way — an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified
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in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, or course, an implicit and unstated
one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing
to the organization and classification of data, which the agreement decrees.
Whorf illustrated his view by taking examples from several languages, and in particular
from Hopi, an Amerindian language. In Hopi, there is one word (masa’ytaka) for everything
that flies except birds — which would include insects, aeroplanes and pilots. This seems
alien to someone used to thinking in English, but, Whorf argues, it is no stranger than
English-speakers having one word for many kinds of snow, in contrast to Eskimo, where
there are different words for falling snow, snow on the ground, snow packed hard like
ice, slushy snow (cf. English slush) and so on. In Aztec, a single word (with different
endings) covers an even greater range of English notions — snow, cold and ice. When
more abstract notions are considered (such as time, duration, velocity), the differences
become more complex: Hopi, for instance, lacks concept of time seen as a dimension,
there are no forms corresponding to English tenses, but there are a series of forms which
make it possible to talk about various durations, from the speaker’s point of view. It
would be very difficult, Whorf argues, for a Hopi and an English physicist to understand
each other’s thinking, given the major differences between the languages.
Examples such as these made the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis very plausible; but in
its strongest form it is unlikely to have any adherents now. The fact that successful
translations between languages can be made and the conceptual uniqueness of a language
such as Hopi can nonetheless be explained using English are major arguments against it. It
is undeniable that there are some conceptual differences between cultures due to language,
but the differences do not make mutual comprehension impossible. One language may
take many words to say what another language says in a single word, but in the end the
circumlocution can make the point.
Similarly, it does not mean that if a language lacks a word, its speakers cannot
grasp the concept. Several languages have few words for numerals: Australian aboriginal
languages are often restricted to a few general words (such as all, many, few, one and
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two). In such cases, it is sometimes said that the people lack the concept of number
and haven’t the intelligence to count. But when these speakers learn English as a second
language, their ability to count and calculate is quite comparable to that of English native
speakers.
However, a weaker version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is generally accepted.
Language may not determine the way we think, but it influences the way we perceive
and remember, and it makes mental tasks easy or difficult. Several experiments have
shown that people recall things more easily if the things correspond to readily available
words or phrases. And people certainly find it easier to make a conceptual distinction if
it corresponds to words available in their language.
When people have begun to reflect on language, its relation to thinking becomes
a central concern. Ancient Indian and Greek cultures independently viewed the main
function of language as the expression of thought. Aristotle’s statement «Speech is the
representation of the experiences of the mind» passed also into Latin theory and thence
into medieval doctrine. Speaking as the expression of thoughts by signs invented for this
purpose, and words of different classes (parts of speech) correspond to the different aspects
of thinking — was the account of rationalist writers on language in the 17th century.
Nowadays certain groups of linguists adhere to H. Sweet’s viewpoints of language. It
gives so wide an interpretation to thought as virtually to empty the word of any specific
content or gives such a narrow interpretation of language as to exclude a great deal
of normal usage. A recognition of the part played by speaking and writing in social
cooperation in everyday life has highlighted the many and varied functions of language in
all cultures, apart from the functions strictly involved in the communication of thought,
which had been the main focus of attention for those who approached language from the
standpoint of the philosopher.
The medieval and rationalist views implied that man as a rational, thinking creature
invented language to express his thoughts, fitting words to an already developed structure
of intellectual competence. With the examination of the historic relations between language
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and thinking, it became more plausible to say that language emerged not as the means
of expressing already formulated judgments, questions, and the like but as the means of
thought itself, and that man’s rationality developed together with the development of his
capacity for speaking.
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2.2
. Seminar II
2.2.1
. Functions of Language. Language and Thinking
I. Consider your answers to the following.
1. Explain how language works using the “triangle of meaning”.
2. Name the functions of language as a social phenomenon.
3. What are the relations between language and thinking?
4. Speak about different perspectives on the issue of language versus thinking.
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5. Present the key points of the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”.
6. What principles does the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” combine?
II. Render the following text in English. Find the facts confirming that language is a
social phenomenon.
Язык есть важнейшее средство человеческого общения. Без языка человеческое
общение невозможно, а без общения не может быть и общества, а тем самым и
человека. Без языка не может быть и мышления, т. е. понимания человеком действительности и себя в ней.
Но и то и другое возможно только в людском общежитии.
Если же человеческое не проявилось и не закрепилось, то потомки людей, попавшие в условия жизни зверей, приобретают навыки животной жизни и утрачивают
безвозвратно все человеческое. Так было с двумя девочками в Индии, которых в
1920 г. индийский психолог Рид Синг обнаружил в волчьем логове вместе с волчатами. Одной из девочек на вид было лет семь-восемь, а другой – года два. Младшая
вскоре умерла, а старшая, названная Камалой, прожила около десяти лет. Р. Синг
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в течение всего этого периода вел дневник наблюдений развития и жизни Камалы.
Из этого дневника и трудов Р. Синга мы узнаем, что Камала вначале ходила на четвереньках, опираясь на руки и колени, а во время бега опиралась на руки и ступни;
мясо ела только с пола, из рук не брала, пила, лакая. Если кто-либо во время еды
к ней подходил, то она издавала звуки, похожие на рычание. Иногда по ночам она
выла. Спала Камала днем, сидя на корточках в углу, лицом к стене. Одежду с себя
срывала. В темноте, ночью девочка очень хорошо видела, первоначально боялась
огня, сильного света, воды.
Через два года Камала научилась стоять, через шесть лет – ходить, но бегала,
как и раньше, на четвереньках. В течение четырех лет она выучила только шесть
слов, а через семь – сорок пять. К этому времени она перестала бояться темноты,
стала есть руками и пить из стакана, полюбила общество людей.
Как видим, при возвращении в жизнь людей сделать Камалу полностью «человеком» не удалось, что справедливо отмечает Р. Синг.
Долгое время ученые пытались доказать, что язык – это такой же организм, как
животные и растения, что он развивается по тем же законам природы, одинаковым
для всех языков в любом месте и в любое время; как все организмы, он рождается,
созревает, достигает расцвета, клонится к упадку и умирает. Особенно популярным
было такое понимание языка в середине XIX в., когда успехи естественных наук, и
в частности дарвинизма, увлекли многих, занимавшихся науками о человеке и его
особенностях.
Однако такое понимание языка не приводит к правильному объяснению явлений
действительности, а, наоборот, уводит от истины.
Некоторые “мысленные” опыты легко могут убедить в обратном.
На первый взгляд может показаться, что ребенок выучивается дышать, смотреть,
ходить и говорить одинаковым путем. Но это неверно. Если новорожденного ребенка
поселить на необитаемый остров и если он выживет там, то он будет прекрасно
бегать, лазать, прятаться от опасностей, добывать себе пищу, но говорить он не
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будет, так как ему не у кого научиться говорить и не с кем говорить.
Природные, биологические свойства человека могут развиваться и вне общества
и в изолированном состоянии, но навыки, связанные с языком, в таких условиях
развиваться не могут.
(А.А. Реформатский "Введение в языкознание")
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SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Concerning the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been the object of a serious and, at times, nasty
debate. Whorf has been accused of being a racist and of distorting his evidence to fit
his theory. One American educational course began with a discussion of whether these
theories were racist. Interestingly enough, this was before any discussion of what the ideas
were. Linguistic determinism has been given an unfair press because some believe it is
the path towards suggesting that one language is superior to another. However, it would
be hard to justify this by reference to their writings.
I think there has been too much concentration on elements of language such as
the number of words used by the Inuit for snow. If language does control thought, it
does so at a very basic level, shaping the possible structures of thought and not the
individual instances. I think the Universal Grammar aspects of the question are more
important here – thought is controlled by concepts such as negation, question, the order
of argument leading to conclusion, justification, etc., and not by the number of ways of
talking about a local weather conditions. Once language has superseded the non-linguistic
thought processes of animals, then it imposes an inevitability of its own logic and, replaces
anything that came before it.
Language may shape human thought
Language may shape human thought – suggests a counting study in a Brazilian tribe
whose language does not define numbers above two.
Hunter-gatherers from the Pirahã tribe, whose language only contains words for the
numbers one and two, were unable to reliably tell the difference between four objects
placed in a row and five in the same configuration, revealed the study.
Experts agree that the startling result provides the strongest support yet for the
controversial hypothesis that the language available to humans defines our thoughts. Socalled “linguistic determinism” was first proposed in 1950 but has been hotly debated
ever since.
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“One, two, many”
The language, Pirahã, is known as a “one, two, many” language because it only
contains words for “one” and “two” – for all other numbers, a single word for “many”
is used. “There are not really occasions in their daily lives where the Pirahã need to
count,” explains Peter Gordon, the psychologist at Columbia University in New York
City.
In order to test if this prevented members of the tribe from perceiving higher numbers,
Gordon set seven Pirahã a variety of tasks. In the simplest, he sat opposite an individual
and laid out a random number of familiar objects, including batteries, sticks and nuts, in
a row. The Pirahã were supposed to respond by laying out the same number of objects
from their own pile.
For one, two and three objects, members of the tribe consistently matched Gordon’s
pile correctly. But for four and five and up to ten, they could only match it approximately,
deviating more from the correct number as the row got longer.
The Pirahã also failed to remember whether a box they had been shown seconds ago
had four or five fish drawn on the top. When Gordon’s colleagues tapped on the floor
three times, the Pirahã were able to imitate this precisely, but failed to mimic strings of
four of five taps.
Language and thought (text)
Language and thought (presentation)
Language and thought (web)
Язык и мышление (web)
Гируцкий. Идеальное и материальное в языке (text)
Гируцкий. Функции языка (text)
Маслов. Функции языка (text)
Реформатский язык как общественное явление (text)
Sapir-Whorf (presentation)
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Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (text)
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (presentation)
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THEME
3
Language and speech, writing
3.1
. Lecture
3.1.1
. Language and speech
Nowadays the more detailed research of the language phenomena has led the linguists
to the necessity of distinguishing at least two objects: language and speech. The problem
of language and speech is considered to be one of the most urgent problems in contemporary
theory of Linguistics. Opposition «language — speech» is considered to be nearly the most
prominent achievement of the Linguistics of the 20th century.
The necessity to differentiate these two notions was introduced by a Swiss scientist
F. de Saussure, who put this opposition as the fundamental idea of his general linguistic
theory.
The basic principles of his theory as presented in «The Course of General Linguistics»
are:
1. differentiation of 3 notions: language, langue and parole (i.e. speech);
2. langue (lingual activities) which comprises everything which is connected with
communication, and is divided into two parts: basic (language) and special (speech);
3. language is social by nature and independent of a man; speech includes individual
aspects of lingual activities;
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4. language is a form, not substation which belongs to speech;
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5. language and speech are closely interrelated in general.
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It’s necessary to mention that the terms lingue activities, speech and language up to
the present time do not have strict definitions.
A modern linguist now uses the definitions given by F. de Saussure but there’s a
tendency to diminish the number of oppositional determiners.
For objective realization of language and speech relations it’s necessary to consider
all three possible approaches to the subject: philosophic, linguistic and pragmatic.
From the philosophic point of view language and speech are the phenomena of different
levels. Language is general and abstract while speech is separate and concrete. From the
linguistic point of view language belongs to psychological phenomenon, and speech — to
psychophysical, as presented in the opposition of ideal — material.
Pragmatics considers the language as stable and generally accepted, while speech is
occasional, unique, and dynamic.
From the historical point of view language is secondary and speech is primary. From
the synchronic point of view the language is primary and the speech is secondary.
The opposition «speech — language» is of great value for the methodology of teaching
native and especially foreign languages. Depending on what is the aim of teaching —
speech or language — the teacher chooses the array of methods from language models
to their realization or vice versa. Nowadays the teaching of language through speech
(text) is becoming more and more popular. The pupils are given neither the data about
the language structure nor the grammatical rules; while reading and analyzing texts they
define the structure of language themselves. This approach comes from the Danish linguist
O. Jesperson, who considered that language should be learned only through speech.
Language and speech are quite different linguistic notions. According to F. de Saussure
language has 2 aspects: the system of language and the manifestation of this system in
social intercourse – speech. The system of language is a body of linguistic units – sounds,
affixes, words, grammar rules and rules of lexical series. The system of language enables
us to speak and to be understood since it is known to all members of a speech community.
Speech is the total of our utterances and texts. It is based on the system of language,
and it gives the linguist the possibility of studying the whole system. Speech is the linear
(syntagmatic) aspect of language; the system of language is the paradigmatic aspect.
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It should be borne in mind, as well, that speed is always individual and is situationally
oriented, whereas the system of language is its ground, it is social and potential entity.
3.1.2
. Writing
The development of writing does not repeat the developmental history of speaking.
Written speech is a separate linguistic function, differing from oral speech in both structure
and mode of functioning. Even its minimal development requires a high level of abstraction.
Writing is also speech without an interlocutor, addressed to an absent or an imaginary
person or to no one in particular.
Inner speech is condensed, abbreviated speech. Written speech is deployed to its
fullest extent, more complete than oral speech. Inner speech is almost entirely predicative
because the situation, the subject of thought, is always known to the thinker. Written
speech, on the contrary, must explain the situation fully in order to be intelligible.
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Writing systems. General properties
Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems
in that one must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to
comprehend the text. By contrast, other possible symbolic systems such as
informationsigns, painting, maps, and mathematics often do not require prior knowledge
of a spoken language.
Every human community possesses language, a feature regarded by many as an innate
and defining condition of humankind. However, the development and adoption of writing
systems has occurred only sporadically. Once established, writing systems on the whole
change more slowly than their spoken counterparts, and often preserve features and
expressions which are no longer current in the spoken language. The great benefit of
writing systems is their ability to maintain a persistent record of information expressed
in a language, which can be retrieved independently of the initial act of formulation.
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Types of writing systems
Most writing systems can be broadly divided into three categories: logographic,
syllabic, and alphabetic (or segmental).
3.1.3
. Logographic writing systems
A logogram is a single written character which represents a complete grammatical
word. Most Chinese characters are classified as logograms.
As each character represents a single word (or, more precisely, a morpheme), many
logograms are required to write all the words of language. The vast array of logograms
and the memorization of what they mean are the major disadvantage of the logographic
systems over alphabetic systems.
While most languages do not use wholly logographic writing systems many languages
use some logograms. A good example of modern western logograms are the Hindu-Arabic
numerals — everyone who uses those symbols understands what 1 means whether he
or she calls it one, eins, uno, yi, ichi or ehad. Other western logograms include the
ampersand &, used for and, the at sign @, used in many contexts for at, the percent sign
% and the many signs representing units of currency ($ ,U,£and so on.)
The most important (and, to a degree, the only surviving) modern logographic writing
system is the Chinese one, whose characters are or were used, with varying degrees of
modification, in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and other east Asian languages.
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Mayan writing system are also systems with
certain logographic features, although they have marked phonetic features as well, and
are no longer in current use.
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3.1.4
. Ideogram
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An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek ιδ έα idea "idea"+ γράϕω grapho "to write")
is a graphic symbol that represents an idea, rather than a group of letters arranged
according to the phonemes of a spoken language, as is done in alphabetic languages, or a
strictly representational picture of a subject as may be done in illustration or photography.
Examples of ideograms include wayfinding signs, such as in airports and other
environments where many people may not be familiar with the language of the place they
are in, as well as Arabic numerals and mathematical notation, which are used worldwide
regardless of how they are pronounced in different languages.
The term "ideogram"is commonly used to describe logographic writing systems such
as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters. However, graphemes in logographic
systems generally represent words or morphemes rather than pure ideas.
3.1.5
. Syllabic writing systems
As logographic writing systems use a single symbol for an entire word, a syllabary is
a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words.
A symbol in a syllabary typically represents a consonant sound followed by a vowel sound,
or just a vowel alone. In a true syllabary there is no systematic graphic similarity between
phonetically related characters (though some do have graphic similarity for the vowels).
That is, the characters for ”ke”, ”ka”, and ”ko” have no similarity to indicate their common
”k”-ness.
Syllabaries are best suited to languages with relatively simple syllable structure, such
as Japanese. To write English using a syllabary, every possible syllable in English would
have to have a separate symbol, and whereas the number of possible syllables in Japanese
is no more than about fifty to sixty, in English there are many thousands.
Other languages that use syllabic writing include Mycenaean Greek (Linear B) and
Native American languages such as Cherokee. Several languages of the Ancient Near East
used forms of cuneiform, which is a syllabary with some non-syllabic elements.
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3.1.6
. Alphabetic writing systems
An alphabet is a small set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly
represents or represented historically a phoneme of a spoken language. The word alphabet
is derived from alpha and beta, the first two symbols of the Greek alphabet.
In a perfectly phonemic alphabet, the phonemes and letters would correspond perfectly
in two directions: a writer could predict the spelling of a word given its pronunciation, and
a speaker could predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling. Each language has
general rules that govern the association between letters and phonemes, but, depending
on the language, these rules may or may not be consistently followed.
Perfectly phonemic alphabets are very easy to use and learn, and languages that have
them (for example Serbocroatian or Finnish) have much lower barriers to literacy than
languages such as English, which has a very complex and irregular spelling system. As
languages often evolve independently of their writing systems, and writing systems have
been borrowed for languages they were not designed for, the degree to which letters of
an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language to
another and even within a single language.
Languages may fail to achieve a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds
in any of several ways:
• A language may represent a given phoneme with a combination of letters rather
than just a single letter. Two-letter combinations are called digraphs and three-letter
groups are called trigraphs.
German uses the tesseragraphs (four letters) "tsch"for
R
the phoneme IPA: [t ] and "dsch"for [dz], although, the latter is rare. Kabardian
also uses a tesseragraph for one of its phonemes.
• A language may represent the same phoneme with two different letters or
combinations of letters.
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• A language may spell some words with unpronounced letters that exist for historical
or other reasons.
• Pronunciation of individual words may change according to the presence of
surrounding words in a sentence (sandhi).
• Different dialects of a language may use different phonemes for the same word.
• A language may use different sets of symbols or different rules for distinct sets of
vocabulary items, such as the Japanese hiragana and katakana syllabaries, or the
various rules in English for spelling words from Latin and Greek, or the original
Germanic vocabulary.
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3.1.7
. Directionality
Different scripts are written in different directions. The early alphabet could be written
in any direction: either horizontal (left-to-right or right-to-left) or vertical (up or down). It
could also be written boustrophedon: starting horizontally in one direction, then turning
at the end of the line and reversing direction. Egyptian hieroglyph is one such script,
where the beginning of a line written horizontally was to be indicated by the direction
in which animal and human ideogram are looking.
The Greek alphabet and its successors settled on a left-to-right pattern, from the
top to the bottom of the page. Other scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew, came to be
written right-to-left. Scripts that incorporate Chinese characters have traditionally been
written vertically (top-to-bottom), from the right to the left of the page, but nowadays
are frequently written left-to-right, top-to-bottom, due to Western influences, a growing
need to accommodate terms in the Roman alphabet, and technical limitations in popular
electronic document formats. The Mongolian alphabet is unique in being the only script
written top-to-bottom, left-to-right; this direction originated from an ancestral Semitic
direction by rotating the page 90◦ counter-clockwise to conform to the appearance of
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Chinese writing. Scripts with lines written away from the writer, from bottom to top,
also exist, such as several used in the Philippines and Indonesia.
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3.2
. Seminar III
3.2.1
. Language and Speech. Writing
I. Consider your answers to the following.
1. Define the terms langue and parole proposed by F. de Saussure.
2. How can language and speech be differentiated?
3. Present the Model of the communicative act.
4. Speak about writing as a specific process.
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5. Characterise the history of writing.
6. What is the difference between European and Asian alphabets.
II. Render the following text in English. What is the prehistory of writing?
Первоначальными средствами непосредственной передачи посланий были предметы, которые выступали как символы, то есть предметная символика. Греческий историк Геродот (V в. до н.э.) рассказал о своеобразном предметном письме,
натравленном скифами персидскому царю Дарию, с народом которого скифы воевали. Оно состояло из птицы, лягушки, мыши и пучка стрел. Жрецы Дария разгадали
это послание, прочитав его примерно так: “Если вы, персы, не можете летать, как
птицы, скакать по болотам, как лягушки, прятаться в землю, как мыши, то вас ждет
гибель от наших стрел”.
Сложное “предметное письмо” сохранилось у некоторых народов Африки. Подчас оно символизирует весьма непростые отношения между людьми, их душевное
состояние. Английские этнографы описали одну из разновидностей символического письма у народности йуруба, в котором камень обозначает твердость, крепость,
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здоровье; уголь символизирует мрачность, печаль; высушенный колос – страдание,
душевную боль; тряпка – пребывание в плохом состоянии вообще. “Письмо”, отправленное одним пленным своей жене в виде камня, угля, сухого колоса и тряпки,
читалось примерно так: “Хотя я телом здоров и крепок, мои надежды на будущее
мрачны, мое тело иссохнет от тревоги и страданий, мой наружный вид уже сейчас
свидетельствует об этом”.
Приводимые способы и средства общения людей представляют собой тип предметного письма, в котором каждый предмет сам по себе что-либо прямо обозначает:
стрела – поражать, птица – летать, лягушка – скакать, мышь – прятаться и т.д. Символика в подобных сообщениях более или менее очевидна. Более высокую ступень
предметного письма представляет собой условная сигнализация, в которой предметы, вещи используются лишь как условные знаки. “Письмо” условными знаками
предполагает предварительную договоренность людей о том, что тот или иной предмет или та либо иная вещь должны обозначать. Из письма условными сигналами
наиболее известны “письмо” кипу, вампум, зарубки на бирках и жезлы вестников.
Перуанское письмо древних инков Kqny (на языке кечуа – узел) представляло
собой систему шнуров из шерсти различного цвета с завязанными на них простыми
и сложными узлами. Каждый из узлов имел определенное значение. Так, простой
узел равнялся 10, двойной – 100, тройной – 1000, два простых узла рядом равнялись
20 и т.д. Различными комбинациями узлов передавались другие цифры. Важную
роль играл цвет шнура. Желтый цвет шнура обозначал золото, белый цвет – серебро, зеленый цвет – хлеб, шнур красного цвета обозначал солдата и т.п. Иногда
в узелке крепился какой-либо предмет – кусочек дерева, камень, зерно. В науке не
существует единого мнения относительно назначения “письма” кипу. Одни считают,
что оно служило исключительно статистическим целям. Другие полагают, что кипу
содержат также тексты хроник, законов, поэтических произведений.
Предметная символика была предысторией письма. Собственно письмо, то есть
начертательное, представляет собой письмо, связанное с использованием графиче-
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ских знаков для фиксации и передачи звукового языка.
(А.А. Гируцкий "Общее языкознание")
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SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Langue and parole
A distinction of great importance to modern linguistics is that between language as
a system or structure, langue, and the use of that language in utterances, parole.
The object of study for linguistics is not principally the mass of individual utterances,
parole, but the underlying system, langue, shared by all the speakers of the language as
a first language or of the variety of the language under investigation.
Language is a social property but it is revealed in speech of a person. The famous
Russian linguist L.V. Sh’erba defined the following types of speech: speaking, listening,
reading and writing. The main feature of speech is its individual character which is
determined by communicative purposes of a speaker or writer. Speech as a psychophysiological process is characterized by certain elements: timbre, tempo, duration, volume,
emotional tone. Speech is specific, language is abstract. Speech is material, it consists of
letters and sounds perceived by a person, language includes abstract analogues of speech
elements (sound – phoneme, word usage – word). Speech is subjective, it’s a product of
human creative activity and language is an objective social phenomenon.
Information theory operates with the concept of the code, i.e. the system of
communication which is employed, for example, Morse code, semaphore, linguistic code,
in order to send messages. As this simplified model of the act of communication indicates,
both sender (source) and receiver (destination) must already be familiar with the code if
the message to be sent is to be encoded at the source and to be decoded and understood
by the receiver.
А language as a system of communication can, minimally, be likened to a “code”
which is shared by individuals for the purpose of transmitting “messages”. According to
this analogy, linguistics – if we adopt de Ferdinand de Saussure’s emphasis on langue
– is principally concerned with describing the code, the system of formal rules, which
manifests itself in the utterances or messages. Applying the same analogy to language
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teaching, the purpose of the language class is to teach the “code”, i.e., the second language,
so that the learner can encode (speak/write) or decode (listen/ read) the second language.
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History of writing
Invention of writing
By definition, history begins with written records; evidence of human culture without
writing is the realm of prehistory. The evolution of writing was a process involving
economic practice and necessity in the Ancient Near East.
The original Mesopotamian writing systems was derived from this method of keeping
accounts, and by the end of the 4th millennium BCE, this had evolved into using a
triangular-shaped stylus pressed into soft clay for recording numbers. Thus the invention
of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze
Age in the late 4th millennium BCE in Sumer, developing into the archaic cuneiform.
History
This script eventually developed into the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, which in turn
was refined into the Phoenician alphabet. Note that the scripts mentioned above are not
considered proper alphabets, as they all lack characters representing vowels. These early
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vowelless alphabets are called abjads, and still exist in scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew
and Syriac.
Phoenician was the first major phonemic script. In contrast to two other widely
used writing systems at the time, Cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, each of which
contained thousands of different characters, it contained only about two dozen distinct
letters, making it a script simple enough for common traders to learn. Another advantage
to Phoenician was that it could be used to write down many different languages, since it
recorded words phonemically.
The script was spread by the Phoenicians, whose Thalassocracy allowed the script to
be spread across the Mediterranean. In Greece, the script was modified to add the vowels,
giving rise to the first true alphabet. The Greeks took letters which did not represent
sounds that existed in Greek, and changed them to represent the vowels. This marks
the creation of a “true” alphabet, with the presence of both vowels and consonants as
explicit symbols in a single script. In its early years, there were many variants of the
Greek alphabet, a situation which caused many different alphabets to evolve from it.
European alphabets
The Cumae form was carried over to the Italian peninsula, where it gave rise to
a variety of alphabets used to inscribe the Italic languages. One of these became the
Latin alphabet, which was spread across Europe as the Romans expanded their empire.
Even after the fall of the Roman state, the alphabet survived in intellectual and religious
works. It eventually became used for the descendant languages of Latin (the Romance
languages), and then for the other languages of Europe.
The Glagolitic alphabet was the script of the liturgical language Old Church Slavonic,
and became the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet. The Cyrillic alphabet is one of the most
widely used modern alphabets, and is notable for its use in Slavic languages and languages
within the former Soviet Union. Variants include the Bulgarian and Russian alphabets.
The Glagolitic alphabet is believed to have been created by Saints Cyril and Methodius,
while the Cyrillic alphabet was invented by the Bulgarian scholar Clement of Ohrid, who
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was their disciple. They feature many letters that appear to have been borrowed from or
influenced by the Greek alphabet and the Hebrew alphabet.
Asian alphabets
Beyond the logographic Chinese writing, many phonetic scripts are in existence in
Asia. The Arabic alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet, and other abjads (they
have letters for consonants and leave most vowels unexpressed) of the Middle East are
developments of the Aramaic alphabet, but because these writing systems are largely
consonant-based they are often not considered true alphabets.
Most alphabetic scripts of India and Eastern Asia are descended from the Brahmi
script, which is often believed to be a descendent of Aramaic, but this link is controversial.
These scripts are abugidas, (they are consonant-based, but indicate vowels with diacritics
to or a systematic graphic modification of the consonants) that is, they write syllables
instead of individual sounds, so their status as alphabets is disputed.
European alphabets, especially Latin and Cyrillic, have been adapted for many
languages of Asia. Arabic is also widely used, sometimes as an abjad (as with Urdu and
Persian) and sometimes as a complete alphabet (as with Kurdish and Uyghur).
Гируцкий. Язык, речь, речевая деятельность (text)
Гируцкий. Письмо (text)
Маслов. Язык и речь (text)
Реформатский язык и речь (text)
History of writing (presentation)
Prehistory of writing (presentation)
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Test №1
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THEME
4
Language and Society
4.1
. Lecture
Language change and variation is an inevitable, regular and continuous process.
Besides temporal variations that the English lexicon has undergone throughout the
centuries, there are also regional, social, personal, spoken and written variations that
attract the interest of professional linguists. From the linguistic point of view none of
them are better or worse, inferior or superior, each of them serves a certain purpose and
performs a certain task, and all of them serve as a material for linguistic investigation.
4.1.1
. Dialect vs. language. Standard norm.
Dialectology
Each person in a certain language community speaks in a different way. The language
used by a person is distinct in pronunciation, in preferences for certain words and even
grammatical patterns. The language pattern of one’s individual speech at a certain period
of his life is called an idiolect. The systematic use of common patterns in grammar,
vocabulary stock and pronunciation by people of a certain locality or a socially limited
group makes up a dialect. Several dialects with a literary norm as their centralizing core
may be viewed as one language.
The distinction between language and dialect is not clear cut. Sometimes for historical
and political reasons two or more dialects may be referred to as different languages, like
Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, for example. Or vice versa, some completely different
dialects may be called one language. This situation occurs in China, where speakers
of different dialects may be almost unintelligible to each other but they share the same
written language tradition based on ideographic characters, and on this written basis they
may communicate with each other and believe they speak the same Chinese language.
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The most prestigious dialect is usually chosen as the standard, or standard norm
of the language. It differs from other dialects, because it is not regional. Educated people
usually use a standard norm although they live in different parts of the country and come
from different social strata.
Besides differences in idiolects, accents and dialects, there are essential differences
between written and oral forms of a language, and each of these forms has its own standard
norm.
So, all languages exist in numerous variations. English is especially varied because of
the great number of its speakers, of its use on vast and distant territories, and of a large
range of functions it performs.
4.1.2
. Regional, social and stylistic varieties
Different branches of linguistics (lexicology, stylistics, sociolinguistics, and
developmental theories) study different variations of a language.
Dialectology traditionally studied geographical phonetic, grammar and lexical
varieties of a language used on a certain territory, or regional dialects. Its subjects were
mostly elderly uneducated people from rural areas who had not moved throughout the
country. The major aim of the study was to reconstruct the historical processes of the
languages’ spread and relations.
The principal method of investigation has always been a questionnaire on some
features of domestic, rural or farming life involving the most stable strata of a language.
Such questionnaires help to get information about phonological, lexical, morphological,
and syntactic features of lexical units. Language atlases are developed on the basis of the
data collected.
It is necessary to emphasize that dialects are not purely regional. Different factors,
such as social or ethnic contexts, combine and intersect to form dialects.
Recently there has been a shift in dialect studies. They have moved from the country
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to the city, and dialectologists have been paying more attention to social rather than
geographical space. Characteristic forms of social groups’ language are usually referred
to as sociolects. Sociolects arise within social groups and are determined by such factors
as 1) geography, 2) socioeconomic status, 3) ethnicity/race, 4) age, 5) occupation, and 6)
gender.
Intriguing, though very controversial, are studies of the relationship between the
social class and language.
It is well known that speakers of the highest social class in Great Britain, for example,
are supposed to speak Standard English. So-called Standard English is a social dialect
used by well-educated English speakers in different localities. It presupposes very little
regional, ethnic or gender variation. One of its most obvious characteristics is RP received, or accepted pronunciation among the best-educated members of the society.
Though only about three percent of the English population speaks RP, this accent is
taught to foreign learners due to its high social prestige. It gives foreigners the best
chance of being understood. It is widely used on radio and television and is familiar to
all the people. It is also the most thoroughly described British accent.
The lowest social class displays a wide range of local accents and dialects of English.
Good examples of opposition of upper-class (U) and other kinds of English word usage
(non-U) were proposed in 1954 by A.S.C. Ross in the article Linguistic class-indicators
in present-day English (1954) even though they are not any more characteristic of current
English:
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have a bath
sick
looking-glass
rich
table-napkin
take a bath
ill
mirror
wealthy
serviette
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vegetables
England
Scotch
sitting-room
lavatory
greens
Britain
Scottish
lounge
toilet
A preference for different vocabulary by different social groups seems to be easily
identifiable and this problem fascinates people. But vocabulary clues are superficial and
not reliable factors of class identity because barriers between groups are fluid.
In America class affiliation characteristics are even less rigid than in Great Britain
as the transition from one social class to another is easier. That is why studies of the
interaction of social identity and vocabulary, initiated by William Labov ’s famous book
The Social Stratification of English in New York City (1966), are still more controversial
and less reliable. Their results are a matter of hot debates and disagreements.
Ethnic language varieties have become the subject matter of linguistic studies and
discussions. In the US there are three populous and often separate ethnic groups: African
Americans, Hispanic Americans, and European Americans. The speech of each group
differs from the other. The speech of African Americans, or Ebonics, and the speech of
Hispanic Americans, or Calo, Tex-Mex, are good examples of ethnically based varieties,
though it should be noted that not all people of these ethnic groups speak them.
Age is also linked to dialect. It is well known that for each age period there are
relevant forms and norms of the language. Some stages of vocabulary development, like
the earliest stage of first words, or special vocabularies of teenagers are quite thoroughly
described by scholars. But we are still without real knowledge of vocabulary development
throughout the human lifespan.
Occupational groups have their own characteristic vocabulary. Legal discourse,
or legalese, and medical discourse, or medicalese, are good examples of occupational
sociolects.
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The relation between language and sex, or gender, has attracted considerable
attention in recent years.
In some African, Asian and Native American language communities, like Koasati - a
Muskogean language spoken in Louisiana, there are significant differences between words
or their grammatical forms proscribed to men and to women when addressing each other
or naming the same concept. (Something similar takes place in inflectional languages, like
Russian, on the grammatical level, when verbs use different grammatical forms depending
on whether the same action was performed by a female or male: он (’he’) шёл (’walked’)
but она (’she’) шла (’walked’). These two Russian forms of the verb are equivalent to
one in English: he/she walked.
It should be noted that though much research has been done in this area, few data have
been found to prove that female and male English speakers employ different vocabulary
systems. Recent research, however, has proven that women speak closer to the prestige
standard. Women tend to use more phrases expressing hesitation like maybe, perhaps,
in my opinion or a kind of, appreciative adjectives like delightful, charming, cute,
precious, darling, nice, great, lovely, and politeness formulae like Would you please
open the door?
But men very often use politeness formulae when they want to sound friendly and
cooperative. In contrast to some African, Asian and Native American languages, in
English there are no lexical units that are exclusively generated and used by either women
or men.
Nevertheless, English reflects social relations between men and women. Some feminist
scholars, especially in the USA, point out to the subordinate status of women in the
so-called ’developed countries’ and they view the differences mentioned above as an
indication of the second-class status of women reflected in the language, as a sign of
a women’s social status, who being members of a subordinate group must be polite.
Many social activists in the US have worked to change language norms that marginalize
disenfranchised groups. In the 80’s such efforts were called ’political correctness’ (PC)
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but recently opponents of this movement have redefined political correctness so that it
is now often understood as meaning "a totalitarian"attitude or process. In any event,
the original aims of advocates of political correctness included ’writing women back into
history and fighting against inequality, security, equal opportunities for all Americans
regardless their race, ethnicity, class, gender, physical abilities, sexual orientation, age and
religious beliefs. They hoped to eliminate from the English vocabulary and syntactical
structures that perpetuated biases. They argued that these linguistic changes would
participate in creating a more equitable, caring society.
There are different ways to exercise political correctness, here meaning "showing
respect". Lots of euphemisms built according to various patterns help us to avoid words
which are regarded to be offensive and have negative connotations. Thus, senior citizens
is often used for elderly people, living with AIDS is preferred to dying of AIDS,
engineer-custodian for janitor, wheelchair user for wheelchair-bound.
In the US Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines currently mandate nonsexist
grammar, vocabulary, syntax, and style. For example, the semifree suffix -man should
be used alongside with - woman when the referent is female. Alternately, a gender
neutral term should be substituted for a gender specific term, for example, firefighter
rather than fireman and first-year student instead of freshman, when it refers to
women and men. Using the masculine pronouns he and his as the universal norm is
now considered incorrect. He/she and his/her are viable substitutes for the purpose of
avoiding sexist language.
Some of the new names have become relatively widely used, especially for commercial
purposes. But hundreds of new euphemisms that the supporters of the ’liberation
movement’ and ’political correctness’ offer, like herstory for history, chemically
inconvenienced for drunk, pharmacologically dependent for drug addict, etc.,
are unlikely to be adopted. One of the reasons for that is that many words should mean
what they mean, otherwise they may distract and disorientate people, as the use of
client for student, success and accomplishment for learning. And then, this kind of
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’newspeak’ including a stock of words deprived of negative connotations is not possible
for a human language. Ironically, many of the newly offered terms seem to cause even
more derogatory associations than the standard ones.
The problems of ’language and gender’, ’political correctness’ do not seem to be a
lexicological problem of vocabulary varieties existing in a language at a certain period.
Rather they are social problems of gender relations and sociolinguistic problems of
language policy, though all these aspects of language study are interesting, are related to
words and contribute to an understanding of what vocabulary is, and of forces driving
its development.
It is interesting to note that "in recent years, particularly among employed women,
the difference between men’s and women’s speech appears to be diminishing".
Vocabulary choice may also differ according to the situation, as it should be appropriate
to all the occasions. Even the same person speaks differently when talking to his boss
or subordinate or to somebody who is senior or younger. Place also affects vocabulary
choice. The same person speaks differently at the official reception or in a pub. These
different stylistic varieties are called registers.
The two major registers are written and spoken English. Nowadays the pendulum
has swung from written to spoken register in practically all spheres of life. This variant
of English, long neglected by writers and lexicographers, is now much more often used in
all kinds of communication.
Though the written variant remains to be a great stabilizer of the language, it changes
under the influence of the spoken register: in modern written speech sentences become
shorter, grammar, spelling and punctuation are being simplified, and dialectal, slang and
even rude words have come into common use.
So, a person easily switches from one stylistic variety of a language, or stylistic register,
to another depending on the language activity: whether he is talking or writing, speaking
at work or at home, in church or at market, with his employer or his employee, with
a senior person or a child, away from the place of his native dialect or within it. The
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stylistic potential of language, including lexical resources, is exclusively diverse and can’t
be predicted. Scholars investigating and describing different speech acts try to take into
account the largest possible number of parameters, yet modelling them is still problematic.
On the whole, modern methodology does not yet allow us to make categorical
statements about language variation and social class because many other influential
factors are involved in the process of language production such as gender, age, ethnicity,
local dialect, occupation and even the speaker’s intention.
So far, only territorial, or regional varieties of English remain to be investigated by
means of reliable methods.
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4.2
. Seminar IV
4.2.1
. Language and Society
I. Consider your answers to the following.
1. Define the terms idiolect, sociolect, dialect.
2. What is the subject of dialectology?
3. Present the viewStandard versus dialect relations.
4. Name the factors that determine sociolects. Give some examples.
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5. Speak about political correctness as a social phenomenon.
6. Characterize such terms as style and register. What functional styles can you name?
II. Render the following text in English. What linguistic studies are mentioned in the
text?
Язык всегда – достояние коллектива. Организация совместной трудовой деятельности, функционирование социальных институтов, развитие культуры имеют
своим непременным условием постоянное и активное речевое общение членов коллектива. В громадном большинстве случаев коллектив людей, говорящих на одном
языке (“языковая общность”), – это коллектив этнический (нация, народность, племя). Языки некоторых этнических коллективов используются и как средство межэтнического общения. Так, русский язык является национальным языком русских
и одновременно языком межнационального общения ряда других наций и народностей. Русский язык является также одним из мировых языков.
Иногда в силу исторических причин в одном этническом коллективе используется не один язык, а параллельно два (и больше), причем сферы их употребления
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обычно так или иначе разграничиваются (например, один язык – дома и в кругу
друзей, другой – на работе, в официальной обстановке и т. д.). Иногда, напротив,
один язык обслуживает в качестве основного средства общения несколько разных
народов. В особых условиях возникают и такие языки, которые ни для кого не являются основными (родными) и служат только для межэтнического общения.
Язык этнической общности, как правило, не является абсолютно единым на всей
территории своего распространения и во всех сферах своего использования. В нем
обнаруживаются определенные внутренние различия: более или менее единый литературный язык обычно противостоит заметно различающимся между собой местным диалектам, а также профессиональным и другим разновидностям языка, отражающим внутреннее членение данного языкового коллектива. Диалекты и групповые различия в языке изучает диалектология, а всю совокупность вопросов, связанных с воздействием общества на язык и с языковыми ситуациями, складывающимися в обществе, – так называемая социолингвистика.
Картографирование явлений, представленных в диалектах (нанесение этих явлений на географическую карту), составляет задачу диалектографии (лингвистической географии), занимающейся также историческим истолкованием изоглосс: их
расположение отражает факты истории края – направление и пределы влияния экономических, политических и культурных центров, пути расселения, торговые пути
и т. д.
В настоящее время в русском и во многих других языках диалекты постепенно
изживаются. В более или менее чистом виде они сохраняются у старших поколений деревенского населения. Для значительной части носителей диалекта характерно своеобразное “двуязычие”: владея параллельно и родным диалектом, и литературным языком, они пользуются то одним, то другим, в зависимости от ситуации
общения. Это ведет к появлению смешанных, переходных форм, так называемых
“полудиалектов”.
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В некоторых языках, например в немецком, итальянском, китайском, положение
диалектов другое. Они используются значительно шире, в том числе и в среде образованных (в неофициальном общении), так что литературно-диалектное “двуязычие”
охватывает практически почти все население. В ряде стран возникла и современная
художественная литература на диалекте.
(Ю.С. Маслов "Введение в языкознание")
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SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Stylistics The term “stylistics” originated from the Greek “stylos”, which means, “a
pen”. In the course of time it developed several meanings, each one applied to a specific
study of language elements and their use in speech.
It is no news that any propositional content – any “idea” – can be verbalized in several
different ways. So, “May I offer you a chair?”, “Take a seat, please”, “Sit down” – have the
same proposition (subject matter) but differ in the manner of expression, which, in its
turn, depends upon the situational conditions of the communication act.
70 per cent of our lifetime is spent in various forms of communication activities – oral
(speaking, listening) or written (reading, writing), so it is self-evident how important it is
for a philologist to know the mechanics of relations between the non-verbal, extralinguistic,
cognitive essence of the communicative act and its verbal, linguistic presentation. It is no
surprise, then, that many linguists follow their famous French colleague Charles Bally,
claiming that Stylistics is primarily the study of synonymic language resources.
Representatives of the not less well-known Prague school – V.Mathesius, T.Vachek,
J.Havranek and others focused their attention on the priority of the situational
appropriateness in the choice of language varieties for their adequate functioning. Thus,
functional stylistics, which became and remains an international, very important trend
in style study, deals with sets, “paradigms” of language units of all levels of language
hierarchy serving to accommodate the needs of certain typified communicative situations.
These paradigms are known as functional styles of the language. Proceeding from the
famous definition of the style of a language offered by V.V.Vinogradov more than half a
century ago, we shall follow the understanding of a functional style formulated by I. R.
Galperin as “a system of coordinated, interrelated and interconditioned language means
intended to fulfil a specific function of communication and aiming at a definite effect.”
All scholars agree that a well developed language, such as English, is streamed into
several functional styles. Their classifications, though, coincide only partially: most style
theoreticians do not argue about the number of functional styles being five, but disagree
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about their nomenclature. This manual offers one of the rather widely accepted
classifications which singles out the following functional styles:
1. official style, represented in all kinds of official documents and papers;
2. scientific style, found in articles, brochures, monographs and other scientific and
academic publications;
3. publicist style, covering such genres as essay, feature article, most writings of “new
journalism”, public speeches, etc.;
4. newspaper style, observed in the majority of information materials printed in
newspapers;
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5. belles-lettres style, embracing numerous and versatile genres of imaginative writing.
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It is only the first three that are invariably recognized in all stylistic treatises. As
to the newspaper style, it is often regarded as part of the publicist domain and is not
always treated individually. But the biggest controversy is flaming around the belleslettres style. The unlimited possibilities of creative writing, which covers the whole of
the universe and makes use of all language resources, led some scholars to the conviction
that because of the liability of its contours, it can be hardly qualified as a functional
style. Still others claim that, regardless of its versatility, the belles-lettres style, in each
of its concrete representations, fulfils the aesthetic function, which fact singles this style
out of others and gives grounds to recognize its systematic uniqueness, i.e. charges it
with the status of an autonomous functional style. To compare different views on the
number of functional styles and their classification see corresponding chapters in stylistic
monographs, reference- and textbooks.
Each of the enumerated styles is exercised in two forms – written and oral: an article
and a lecture are examples of the two forms of the scientific style; news broadcast on the
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radio and TV or newspaper information materials – of the newspaper style; an essay and
a public speech – of the publicist style, etc.
The number of functional styles and the principles of their differentiation change with
time and reflect the state of the functioning language at a given period. So, only recently,
most style classifications also included the so called poetic style which dealt with verbal
forms specific for poetry. But poetry, within the last decades, lost its isolated linguistic
position; it makes use of all the vocabulary and grammar offered by the language at large
and there is hardly any sense in singling out a special poetic style for the contemporary
linguistic situation, though its relevance for the language of the seventeenth, eighteenth
and even the biggest part of the nineteenth centuries cannot be argued.
Something similar can be said about the oratoric style, which in ancient Greece was
instrumental in the creation of “Rhetoric”, where Aristotle, its author, elaborated the
basics of style study, still relevant today. The oratoric skill, though, has lost its position
in social and political life. Nowadays speeches are mostly written first, and so contain
all the characteristic features of publicist writing, which made it unnecessary to specify
oratoric style within the contemporary functional stratification of the language.
All the above-mentioned styles are singled out within the literary type of the language.
Their functioning is characterized by the intentional approach of the speaker towards
the choice of language means suitable for a particular communicative situation and the
official, formal, preplanned nature of the latter.
The colloquial type of the language, on the contrary, is characterized by the unofficiality,
spontaneity, informality of the communicative situation. Sometimes the colloquial type
of speech is labelled “the colloquial style” and entered into the classification of functional
styles of the language, regardless of the situational and linguistic differences between
the literary and colloquial communication, and despite the fact that a style of speech
manifests a conscious, mindful effort in choosing and preferring certain means of expression
for the given communicative circumstances, while colloquial speech is shaped by the
immediacy, spontaneity, unpremeditativeness of the communicative situation. Alongside
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this consideration there exists a strong tendency to treat colloquial speech as an individual
language system with its independent set of language units and rules of their connection.
Гируцкий. Биологическое, социальное и индивидуальное в языке (text)
Маслов. Язык и общество (text)
Маслов. Стилистические различия языка (text)
Language and Society (presentation)
Political correctness (text)
Political correctness (presentation)
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THEME
5
World languages
5.1
. Lecture
5.1.1
. Origin of language
Linguists agree that there are no existing primitive languages, and all modern human
populations speak languages of comparable complexity. While existing languages differ
in the size of and subjects covered in their lexicons, all possess the grammar and syntax
needed, and can invent, translate, or borrow the vocabulary necessary to express the
full range of their speakers’ concepts. All humans possess similar linguistic abilities, and
no child is born with a biological predisposition favoring any one language or type of
language.
What this implies is that the evolution of modern human language required both the
development of the anatomical apparatus and also neurological changes in the brain. The
origin of language (glottogony) is a topic that has attracted considerable speculation
throughout human history. The use of language is one of the most conspicuous and
diagnostic traits that distinguish it Homo sapiens from other species. Unlike writing,
spoken language leaves no trace. Hence linguists have to resort to indirect methods in
trying to decipher the origins of language. Perhaps because of this absence of physical
evidence, there has been no shortage of speculation about the origins of human speech.
We shall consider the merits of some of those speculations.
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1. Logos theory(Greek “logos” – mind, thought)
The divine source. According to this view God created Adam and «whatsoever
Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof» (Genesis, 2:19).
Alternatively, following a Hindu tradition, language came from the goddess
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Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, creator of the universe. In most religions, there appears
to be a divine source that provides humans with language.
2. Onomatopoeic theory
A quite different view of the beginnings of human speech is based on the concept of
«natural sounds». The suggestion is that primitive words could have been imitations
of the natural sounds which early men and women heard around them. When an
object flew by, making a CUCKOO sound, the early human imitated the sound and
used it to refer to the object associated with the sound. The fact that all modern
languages have some words with pronunciations which seem to «echo» naturally
occurring sounds could be used to support this theory. In English, in addition to
cuckoo, we have splash, hang, boom, rattle, buzz, hiss,screech, and forms such as bowwow. In fact, this type of view has been called the «bow-wow theory» of language
origin. While it is true that a number of words in any language are onomatopoeic
(echoing natural sounds), it is hard to see how most of the soundless, not to mention
abstract, entities in our world could have been referred to in a language that simply
echoed natural sounds. We might also be rather skeptical about a view, which seems
to assume that a language is only a set of words that are used as «names» for
entities.
The trouble with this theory is that the same natural noise is, apparently, heard
differently by different people, what is «cook-a-doodle-doo» to an Englishman is
«cocorico» to a Frenchman and «cu-carecu» to a Russian. Naturally there are sound
imitative words and the bans to words as a result of identification of sound and its
meaning. But there are not so many sound imitative words in language, and the
most important thing is that they are different in various languages. Sound imitative
words have sounds and forms as the results of the development typical of a definite
language.
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3. Interjection theory
The essence of this theory is that the original sounds of language came from natural
cries of emotion, such as pain, anger and joy. By this route, presumably, OUCH came
to have its painful connotations. Gradually the connection between word sound
and emotional state of a person disappeared. However, it has been noted that the
expressive noises people make in emotional reactions contain sounds, which are not
otherwise used in their language, and, consequently, seem to be unlikely candidates
as source-sounds.
4. Gestural theory
One suggestion regarding the origins of the sounds of language involves a link
between physical gesture and orally produced sounds. It does seem reasonable that
physical gesture, involving the whole body, could have been a means of indicating a
wide range of emotional states and intentions. Indeed, many of our physical gestures,
using body, hands and face, are a means of nonverbal communication still used by
modern humans, even with their developed linguistic skills.
The gestural theory states that human language developed from gestures that were
used for simple communication.
The important question for gestural theories is why there was a shift to vocalization.
There are two likely explanations:
(a) Our ancestors started to use more and more tools, meaning that their hands
were occupied and could not be used for gesturing.
(b) Gesturing requires that the communicating individuals can see each other.
There are many situations in which individuals need to communicate even
without visual contact, for instance when a predator is closing in on somebody
who is up in a tree picking fruit.
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Humans still use hand and facial gestures when they speak, especially when people
meet who have no language in common.
Common to these two theories is the existence of the language of gestures, which
expresses more rational conceptions. Both theories propose the origin of the
mechanism of speaking, basically in psychological and physiological area. The
disregard of social factors in these theories brought about skeptic attitude to them.
5. Theory of social compact
It states that ancient people invented speech as they later invented printing. People
agreed upon word meanings and their connections with real objects and notions.
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5.1.2
. History of research
Late 18th to early 19th century European scholarship assumed that the languages
of the world reflected various stages in the development from primitive to advanced
speech, culminating in the Indo European family seen as the most advanced. "Origin of
language"as a subject of its own emerges out of studies of neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics
and human evolution in general.
Historical experiments
History contains a number of anecdotes about people who attempted to discover the
origin of language by experiment. The first such tale was told by Herodotus, who relates
that Pharaoh "Psamtik"(probably Psammetichus I) caused two children to be raised by
deaf-mutes; he would see what language they ended up speaking. When the children
were brought before him, one of them said something that sounded to the pharaoh like
bekos, the Phrygian word for bread. From this, Psamtik concluded that Phrygian was the
first language. King James V of Scotland is said to have tried a similar experiment; his
children were supposed to have ended up speaking Hebrew. Both the medieval monarch
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Frederick II and Akbar, a 16th century Mughal emperor of India, are said to have tried
a similar experiment; the children involved in these experiments did not speak.
Гируцкий. Происхождение языка (text)
5.1.3
. Classification of languages
There are two possible ways of language classifications:
1. Grouping languages according to similarity in language material (roots, affixes,
words) and to their common origin – genealogical classification.
2. Grouping languages according to commonness in their types and structures regardless
of language origins – typological (morphological) classification.
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5.1.4
. Language families
A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common
ancestor, called the proto-language. As with biological families, the evidence of relationship
is observable shared characteristics. An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit;
that is, all its members derive from a common ancestor, and all attested descendants of
that ancestor are included in the family. Most of the world’s languages are known to
belong to families; for many others, however, family relationships are not known or only
tentatively proposed.
The concept of language families is based on the assumption that over time languages
gradually diverge into dialects and then into new languages. However, linguistic ancestry
is less clear-cut than biological ancestry, because there are extreme cases of languages
mixing due to language contact in conquest or trade, whereas biological species normally
don’t interbreed.
The common ancestor of a language family is seldom known directly, since most
languages have a relatively short recorded history. However, it is possible to recover
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many features of a proto-language by applying the comparative method—a reconstructive
procedure worked out by 19th century linguist August Schleicher. This can demonstrate
the validity of many of the proposed families in the list of language families. For example,
the reconstructible common ancestor of the Indo-European language family is called
Proto-Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European is not attested by written records, since it
was spoken before the invention of writing.
Sometimes, though, a proto-language can be identified with a historically known
language. Provincial dialects of Latin ("Vulgar Latin") gave rise to the modern Romance
languages, so the Proto-Romance language is more or less identical with Latin (if not
exactly with the literary Latin of the Classical writers). Similarly, dialects of Old Norse
are the proto-language of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Faroese and Icelandic.
Language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally
referred to as branches of the family, because the history of a language family is often
represented as a tree diagram. However, the term family is not restricted to any one level
of this "tree". The Germanic family, for example, is a branch of the Indo-European family.
Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a certain level, but there is little consensus
in how to do so. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, and
groups into complexes. The terms superfamily, phylum, and stock are applied to proposed
groupings of language families whose status as phylogenetic units is generally considered
to be unsubstantiated by accepted historical linguistic methods.
Languages that cannot be reliably classified into any family are known as isolates. A
language isolated in its own branch within a family, such as Greek within Indo-European,
is often also called an isolate; but the meaning of isolate in such cases is usually clarified.
For instance, Greek might be referred to as an Indo-European isolate. The isolation of
modern Greek, however, is not typical of its relationship to other languages at other
times in its history. Several Greek dialects evolved out of the larger Indo-European
language group; and later, Greek words influenced many other languages. By contrast,
the Basque language is a living modern language and a near perfect isolate. The history
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of its lexical, phonetic, and syntactic structures is not known, and is not easily associated
to other languages, though it has been influenced by Romance languages in the region,
like Castilian Spanish, Occitan, and French.
Connections among and between language families are often used by anthropologists,
in combination with DNA evidence and fossil evidence, to help reconstruct pre-historic
migrations of peoples, and other pre-historic events, such as the spread of agriculture.
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5.2
. Seminar V
5.2.1
. World Languages
I. Consider your answers to the following
1. Speak about linguistic theories concerning the origin of language.
2. What types of language classifications do you know?
3. Discriminate between the terms language family, isolate, branch, stock and group.
4. Present the system of Indo-European languages.
5. What places do English and Russian have in the system of the Indo-European
language family?
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SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Seminars
Language Families. Indo-European languages
The most well known of all language families is the Indo-European, which comprises
roughly 12 major groups and hundreds of languages. The major groups or subfamilies
are Celtic, Italic (including Romance), Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, Anatolian, Greek, Indic,
Iranian, Tocharian, Albanian, and Armenian. In addition, it appears that Baltic and
Slavic should form a larger Balto-Slavic group, and Indic and Iranian should be placed
in an Indo-Iranian group.
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Here’s small list of words common to most Indo-European languages:
Group
Language
Germanic Old English
Italic
Latin
Celtic
Old Irish
Hellenic
Greek
Indic
Sanskrit
Iranian
Avestan
Slavic
Russian
Armenian
Armenian
Tocharian Tocharian B
Proto-Indo-European
“father”
fæder
pater
athair
pater
pitar
pitar
otech
hayr
pacer
*pæter
Lexicon
“mother” “brother”
modor
brodor
mater
frater
mathair
brathir
meter
phrater
matar
bhratar
matar
bratar
matka
brat
macer
*mater
procer
*bhrater
“two”
twa
duos
do
duos
dva
dwa
dva
erku
wi
*duwos
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Group
Language
Germanic Old English
Italic
Latin
Celtic
Old Irish
Hellenic
Greek
Indic
Sanskrit
Iranian
Avestan
Slavic
Russian
Armenian
Armenian
Tocharian Tocharian B
Proto-Indo-European
"three"
trie
tres
tri
tri
trayas
trayo
tri
Erek’
trai
*treyes
Lexicon
“four”
“horse”
feowre
eoh
quattuor
equus
ceathair
ech
tetra
hippos
chatvari
asva
chatvaro
aspa
chetyre
loshaa (kon)
Cork’
S’twer
yakwe
*kwetores
*ek’wos
Note: 1. Greek phrater means “clan member”
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Languages in the same box as English (the Germanic Languages) are sister languages
to English and are its closest relatives. Languages in other boxes are “cousin” languages –
still related but not as closely. The further the box, the more distant the relationship. The
Indo-European family is one of many language families. Languages belonging to other
families are not related to English. Examples of unrelated languages include Arabic,
Basque, Hungarian, Mandarin, Malay, Quechua, Tamil, Turkish and Zulu.
English - a family tree (text)
Language families of the world (web)
Language families (web)
30 Most spoken languages (presentation)
Language maps (presentation)
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THEME
6
History of the English language
6.1
. Lecture
English is a Germanic Language of the Indo-European Family. It is the second most
spoken language in the world.
It is estimated that there are 300 million native speakers and 300 million who use
English as a second language and a further 100 million use it as a foreign language. It
is the language of science, aviation, computing, diplomacy, and tourism. It is listed as
the official or co-official language of over 45 countries and is spoken extensively in other
countries where it has no official status. English plays a part in the cultural, political or
economic life of these countries.
This compares to 27 for French, 20 for Spanish and 17 for Arabic. This domination is
unique in history. Speakers of languages like French, Spanish and Arabic may disagree, but
English is on its way to becoming the world’s unofficial international language. Mandarin
(Chinese) is spoken by more people, but English is now the most widespread of the world’s
languages.
Half of all business deals are conducted in English. Two thirds of all scientific papers
are written in English. Over 70% of all post/mail is written and addressed in English.
Most international tourism, aviation and diplomacy is conducted in English.
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6.1.1
. The Development of English
Like most languages, English has an oral base. English is considered a hybrid language
in that it has continuously borrowed words from other languages as a result of trade,
wars, and revolutions. English can be broken down into three periods: Old English,
(600 to 1100), Middle English (1100 to 1500), and Modern English (1500 to today).
Approximately one fourth of all English words used today can be traced to Old English
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origins.
English is a member of the Indo-European language family, the common source of
languages spoken by a third of the world’s population. The Indo-European language
family can be broken down into several branches. The Italic branch of the Indo-European
family tree, for example, includes French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. The framework
for the English language was primarily created by the Celtic and Germanic branches.
The Celts were one of the earliest peoples to migrate to the British Isles. "True
British"are those people who are descendants of the Celts. These include the Irish, Scots,
and Welsh. When Julius Caesar arrived in the British Isles in 55 B.C. Celts met his boat.
Other Roman legions followed Julius Caesar to the British Isles, but when the Roman
Empire fell in A.D. 410, the legions left.
The next major invaders were the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, those Germanic raiders
who sailed from Denmark and Germany in A.D. 449. Like the American Indians in
America, the Celts were driven westward by the invaders. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes
terrorized the inhabitants. "The English language arrived in Britain on the point of a
sword"(McCrum et al., 1986, p. 60). Time passed and the Angles and Saxons became an
agrarian people. Therefore, the Anglo-Saxons developed terms such as sheep, shepherd,
earth, plough, ox, swine, and calf. Other familiar words, including laughter, mirth, coal,
hat, glove, man, wife, child, here, there, you, the, and is are also of Anglo-Saxon origin.
Indeed, it is almost impossible to write or speak a sentence without including Anglo-Saxon
words.
Since the Anglo-Saxons were largely an illiterate people, theirs was an oral culture.
Relying on speech and memory, they created poems, shared stories, and sang ballads, all
of which helped to perpetuate "Englisc"in "Englaland".
In A.D. 597, St. Augustine brought Christianity to England, which was predominantly
pagan at the time. The building of churches and monasteries led to the improvement of
education in England, for the monks taught a wide range of subjects, including arithmetic,
poetry, and Latin. From Latin, English has borrowed such words as angel, cap, beet, cheese,
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mass, relic, school, and wine. The Anglo-Saxons contributed the words God, heaven, and
hell to Christianity.
Scandinavian peoples, the Vikings, were the next to invade England. These Vikings, or
Danes as the Anglo-Saxons called them, raided the British Isles in A.D. 793, plundering
the gold and silver of the monasteries. Such raids continued throughout the ninth century,
until the Danes were defeated by King Alfred the Great’s army in A.D. 878. Unlike the
Celts, whose language had little influence on English, the Danes contributed nearly a
thousand words to the English language. Hit, birth, leg, knife, sky, still, skin, steak, and
want are some of the most frequently used Danish terms today.
King Alfred the Great was able to unite more of England than any previous ruler. He
ordered the monasteries and schools that the Danes had destroyed to be rebuilt. Most
importantly, King Alfred adopted English as the official language of the land, using it to
create a sense of identity for the country. As a result, books were translated into English,
and King Alfred ordered a history to be written to preserve the common heritage of the
English people. Therefore, King Alfred is greatly, if not solely, responsible for saving and
preserving the English language.
The next major invasion came in 1066, when the Normans, under the command
of William the Conqueror, landed at Hastings. The English royal family and court were
destroyed in an ensuing battle, leaving the control of England to the French. Thus, French
became the official language of the land and eventually French words such as attorney,
lieutenant, justice, stamp, envelope, felony, colonel, nobility, and sovereign came into the
English language.
When the French finally left England in 1244, a majority of the English people still
spoke Anglo-Saxons, not having given in to their Norman rulers and adopted French. For
example, the people of the villages and farms continued to speak of calf, ox, and swine,
whereas the Normans referred to the same animals as veal, beef, and pork. Nevertheless,
French words still permeate the language of the kitchen: pate, saute, mutton, braise, broil,
cuisine, roast, souffle, and croissant.
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After the French returned to France, the English were never again successfully invaded.
However, the English language was still pervious to change. Trade, wars, and the discovery
of new lands provided it with new words from which to borrow. Englishman William
Caxton ventured to Germany to examine the Guttenburg printing press, a remarkable
machine that had movable type. So impressed was Caxton that in 1475 he produced in
Bruges (in what is now Belgium) the first book printed in English. Well aware of the
importance of such a printing press, entrepre-neur Caxton returned to England to set up
his own press in Westminster, where he printed more than a hundred books in English.
The development and use of the movable-type printing press was important because
it not only increased the opportunity for the common folk to read and write but also
standardized spelling. Prior to the mass production of books, people who could read and
write were gentry. Words were spelled at the writer’s whim, some-times being spelled
four or five different ways in a single letter.
As the English empire grew, so did the language, as sailors, soldiers, and traders
encountered the peoples of other nations. From the Dutch, a great sailing people, came
Yankee, yacht, keel, deck, schooner, freight, cruiser, cookie, toy, and tub. The Italians
provided design, opera, cello, violin, piano, volcano, torso, cartoon, cash, carnival, and
broccoli.
The German language, despite being from the same branch of the Indo-European
language family as English, has lent English relatively few words. Among those are
delicatessen, hamburger, frankfurter, and dollar.
From Spanish come several frequently used words, including alligator, banana, canoe,
cocoa, potato, ranch, rodeo, and tomato. Also from Spanish come the weather terms
hurricane and tornado and the names for those infamous pesky insects cockroach and
mosquito.
English has borrowed from Arabic algebra, candy, lemon, orange, sugar, and magazine.
Bagel, ebony, cherub, and sapphire are inherited Hebrew terms. From African languages
come gorilla, jazz, chimpanzee, and voodoo.
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Not many words have been borrowed from Asian languages, largely because of the
centuries of limited Asian contact with the Western world. From Indian come cot, khaki,
bungalow, loot, and the sport of kings, polo. Malayalam gave us teak, a type of wood.
From Chinese come tea and chow mein. Japanese has lent bonsai, kimono, jiujitsu, and
sushi. However, most of the Japanese terms English-speaking people use are trade names:
Honda, Nissan, Sony, Yamaha, and the like.
Native Americans provided some state names, notably Illinois and Indiana. Many
United States city names also derive from Native American words. For example, Chicago
comes from a Native American word meaning "place that smells like onions.“ Manhattan
translates into the "place where all got drunk". Perhaps the Indians were even prescient in
the naming of Peoria, Illinois, now a city that manufactures large earth-moving equipment.
Peoria means the "place of great beasts". Maize, caucus, skunk, raccoon and wampum
are other donated Indian terms.
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6.1.2
. Modern state of the English language. Variants of English
Seminars
From the point of view of regional variation, English is a very special language, because
it is spoken as a native language by more than 300 million people all around the world.
English became the basis for many Pidgin and Creole languages - simplified systems
with minimum morphology that serve only the most important functions of a language.
Pidgin is a subsidiary language system. It’s a language based on a simplified grammar
and lexicon taken from one or more fully developed languages: Malanesian Pidgin English
(80%) in Papua New Guinea, governed by rules for verbs and word order. Spoken by
people with no common language, it is a mixed language used for communication, and
the vocabulary of one of the languages is more dominant than the others.
Creole is the Pidgin that has become a first language for some speech communities
(with a complete array of grammatical distinctions and a large vocabulary). Englishbased Creoles are Antillan, Jamaican, Gullah, Hawaiian, Ток Pisin and some other Creole
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languages on the tropical belt where plantation labourers synthesized different languages.
Nowadays English is widely used as a lingua francae - the language of communication
between large numbers of people who do not share a common language.
English is generally acknowledged to be the world’s most important language, the
most international of languages. English has come closest to being the single international
language - lingua francae ("lingua francae"means the "language of Franks a trade language
in the Mediterranean region in medieval times) though the term can be referred to any
language used as a common tongue by people who do not speak one another’s native
tongue (English as it is spoken in India and Pakistan, Yiddish derived from German and
spoken among Jews of Eastern Europe).
It is perhaps worth glancing briefly at the basis of that vitality of the English language,
at the basis for that evaluation. The criterions are as follows:
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1. the number of speakers:
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- 300 mln native speakers of the English language (ranks well below Chinese - over
three times that number of speakers);
2. the geographical dispersal:
- for 1500 mln - over a third of the world’s population English is one of the native
languages;
3. its functional load:
- the medium for highly valued cultural manifistations such as science and the great
literatures, automation and computer technology;
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4. economic and political influence of the native speakers of the language:
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- the US gross domestic product in 1980 was more than double that of its nearest
competitor, Japan;
5. its quality as a language (on C.L.Wrenn):
a) heterogeneousness - the varied ease and readiness with which it has taken to itself
material from almost everywhere in the world and has made the new elements of language
its own;
b) simplicity of inflection - the minimum of change in the shapes of words or variation
of endings;
c) fixed word order taking the place of the freedom of meaning made possible by the
system of inflections, as well as;
d) use of periphrasis and roundabout ways of saying things;
e) new varieties of intonation to express shades of meanings;
f) the cultural neutrality of English used for communication across frontiers: in
advertising and sales, international aviation, shipping and sport, education and diplomacy,
business and public communication.
Notice: The choice of an international language, or lingua francae, is never based on
linguistic or aesthetic criteria but always on political, economic and demographic ones.
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6.2
. The English Language: Evolution and Modern State
6.2.1
. Seminar VI
The history of English
I. Consider your answers to the following.
1. Using the scheme speak about the periods in the history of English.
2. What did the word “English” derive from?
3. What is the origin of the English language? What did the vocabulary of Old English
consist of?
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4. What peoples invaded England in different historical periods?
5. Speak about English as an official language of England. What difficulties did it
come through?
6. What grammatical changes took place in English in each of the historical periods?
7. Name the languages which enriched English during its development. Prove your
answer with examples.
II. Explain the difference in meanings in the following pairs of Norse and English
words.
Anger – wrath; bask – bathe; skill – craft; skip – shift; skin – hide.
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SUPPLEMENTARY READING
English - a historical summary (text)
The origins of words and names (web)
The history of English
The history of the language can be traced back to the arrival of three Germanic tribes
to the British Isles during the 5th Century AD. Angles, Saxons and Jutes crossed the
North Sea from what is the present day Denmark and northern Germany. The inhabitants
of Britain previously spoke a Celtic language. This was quickly displaced. Most of the
Celtic speakers were pushed into Wales, Cornwall and Scotland. One group migrated to
the Brittany Coast of France where their descendants still speak the Celtic Language of
Breton today. The Angles were named from Engle, their land of origin. Their language
was called Englisc from which the word, English derives.
An Anglo-Saxon inscription dated between 450 and 480AD is the oldest sample of the
English language.
During the next few centuries four dialects of English developed:
Northumbrian in Northumbria, north of the Humber
Mercian in the Kingdom of Mercia
West Saxon in the Kingdom of Wessex
Kentish in Kent
During the 7th and 8th centuries, Northumbria’s culture and language dominated
Britain. The Viking invasions of the 9th century brought this domination to an end (along
with the destruction of Mercia). Only Wessex remained as an independent kingdom. By
the 10th century, the West Saxon dialect became the official language of Britain. Written
Old English is mainly known from this period. It was written in an alphabet called
Runic, derived from the Scandinavian languages. The Latin Alphabet was brought over
from Ireland by Christian missionaries. This has remained the writing systems of English.
At this time, the vocabulary of Old English consisted of an Anglo-Saxon base with
borrowed words from the Scandinavian languages (Danish and Norse) and Latin. Latin
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gave English words like street, kitchen, kettle, cup, cheese, wine, angel, bishop, martyr,
candle. The Vikings added many Norse words: sky, egg, cake, skin, leg, window (wind
eye), husband, fellow, skill, anger, flat, odd, ugly, get, give, take, raise, call, die, they, their,
them. Celtic words also survived mainly in place and river names (Devon, Dover, Kent,
Trent, Severn, Avon, Thames).
Many pairs of English and Norse words coexisted giving us two words with the same
or slightly differing meanings. Examples below.
Norse
English
Norse
English
anger
skin
fro
raise
ill
bask
wrath
hide
from
rear
sick
bathe
skill
craft
nay
no
dike
ditch
skirt
shirt
scatter shatter
skip
shift
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Seminars
In 1066 the Normans conquered Britain. French became the language of the Norman
aristocracy and added more vocabulary to English. More pairs of similar words arose.
French
English
French
English
close
demand
desire
ire
shut
ask
wish
wrath/anger
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reply
answer
annual
yearly
chamber room
power
might
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Because the English underclass cooked for the Norman upper class, the words for
most domestic animals are English (ox, cow, calf, sheep, swine, deer) while the words for
the meats derived from them are French (beef, veal, mutton, pork, bacon, venison). The
Germanic form of plurals (house, housen; shoe, shoen) was eventually displaced by the
French method of making plurals: adding an s (house, houses; shoe, shoes). Only a few
words have retained their Germanic plurals: men, oxen, feet, teeth, children.
French also affected spelling so that the cw sound came to be written as qu (eg. cween
became queen).
It wasn’t till the 14th century that English became dominant in Britain again. In
1399, King Henry IV became the first king of England since the Norman Conquest whose
mother tongue was English. By the end of the 14th century, the dialect of London had
emerged as the standard dialect of what we now call Middle English. Chaucer wrote
in this language.
Modern English began around the 16th century and, like all languages, is still
changing. One change occurred when the th of some verb forms became s (loveth, loves:
hath, has). Auxiliary verbs also changed (he is risen, he has risen).
The historical influence of language in the British Isles can best be seen in place names
and their derivations.
Examples include ac (as in Acton, Oakwood) which is Anglo-Saxon for oak; by (as in
Whitby) is Old Norse for farm or village; pwll (as in Liverpool) is Welsh for anchorage;
baile (as in Balmoral) is Gaelic for farm or village; ceaster (as in Lancaster) is Latin
for fort.
Since the 16th century, because of the contact that the British had with many peoples
from around the world, and the Renaissance of Classical learning, many words have
entered the language either directly or indirectly. New words were created at an increasing
rate. Shakespeare coined over 1600 words. This process has grown exponentially in the
modern era.
Borrowed words include names of animals (giraffe, tiger, zebra), clothing (pyjama,
turban, shawl), food (spinach, chocolate, orange), scientific and mathematical terms
(algebra, geography, species), drinks (tea, coffee, cider), religious terms (Jesus, Islam,
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nirvana), sports (checkmate, golf, billiards), vehicles (chariot, car, coach), music and
art (piano, theatre, easel), weapons (pistol, trigger, rifle), political and military terms
(commando, admiral, parliament), and astronomical names (Saturn, Leo, Uranus).
Languages that have contributed words to English include Latin, Greek, French,
German, Arabic, Hindi (from India), Italian, Malay, Dutch, Farsi (from Iran and
Afghanistan), Nahuatl (the Aztec language), Sanskrit (from ancient India), Portuguese,
Spanish, Tupi (from South America) and Ewe (from Africa).
The list of borrowed words is enormous.
The vocabulary of English is the largest of any language.
Even with all these borrowings the heart of the language remains the Anglo-Saxon
of Old English. Only about 5000 or so words from this period have remained unchanged
but they include the basic building blocks of the language: household words, parts of the
body, common animals, natural elements, most pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and
auxiliary verbs. Grafted onto this basic stock was a wealth of contributions to produce,
what many people believe, is the richest of the world’s languages.
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Test №2
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6.2.2
. Seminar VII
Borrowings in English
I. Consider your answers to the following.
1. Give different interpretations of the term “borrowing in English”.
2. Point out the ways of creating English words on the basis of foreign forms.
3. What relations between loan and native words are possible?
4. Speak about etymological doublets in English. Give your own examples.
II. Why loan words may be tricky for a language learner? Translate the sentences
using the dictionary.
1. The fabric is good. 2. We admired his complexion. 3. Check the data. 4. You must
be accurate. 5. Can an orchestra play without a conductor?
III. Analyse the assimilation of the following words. Translate them into Russian and
define the language they were borrowed from.
Coup d’etat, kindergarten, tete-a-tete, Blitzkrieg, enfant terrible, persona grata, beau
monde, leit-motiv, bon mot, prima donna, nazi.
IV. Find international words in the following sentences.
1. Many of the things we knew later were not then in existence – the telegraph,
telephone, express company, ocean steamer, city delivery of mails. 2. The purity of cotton
cellulose accounts for its use in manufacture of gun cotton for high explosives. 3. He
diagnosed the man’s disease, but refused on ground of medical etiquette to disclose its
nature.
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SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Borrowings in English
As in the case with native words, one should bear in mind that there are different
interpretations of the term “borrowing in English”. It may be understood as:
1. the process and the result of the process of adopting by seventh-century Engelisck
and later words, word combinations or morphemes from other languages (-able,
-ment, parliament, and coup d’etat);
2. any word or word combination created in English on the basis of a foreign form:
• translation-loans – words and expressions from the material available in the language
after the patterns characteristic of the given language, but under the influence of
foreign lexical units. Quite a lot of them have Germanic origins (superman [from
G ?bermensch], lightning-war [from G Blitzkrieg], masterpiece [from G Meisterst?ck],
homesickness [from G Ifeimweh], standpoint [from G Standpunkt]), summit conference
[from G Gipfel
Conference], though other languages contributed to this process too, for example,
mother tongue [from L lingua materna], first dancer [from L prima balerina]; wallpaper [from Russ стенная газета]; the moment of truth [from Sp el momento de
la verdad];
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• semantic borrowings – the appearance of a new word meaning due to the influence
of the related word in a foreign language. For example, the meaning “a subdivision of
an executive department” appeared in the English word bureau under the influence
of the related Russian word бюро as in Политическое бюро. Or on analogy with the
Russian word товарищ, used as the form of address in the former USSR and some
other socialist (communist) countries, the related English word comrade acquired
a new meaning “COMMUNIST”;
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• words coined from Greek or Latin roots – the longest and usually most difficult
words in the English vocabulary where alongside with well familiar photograph,
telephone there are many special terms like otorhinolaryngology or
sphygmomanometer. The longest word registered in English texts so far is
nocalcalinocetaceoaluminosocupreovitriolic. So, the English vocabulary is considered
to have a mixed character because of the great number of borrowings from more than
80 languages all over the world. All in all, up to 70% of Modern English vocabulary
consists of loans, or borrowed words, and only 30% of the words are native due to the
specific conditions of the English language development. Speaking of borrowings,
one should not confuse the terms “source of borrowing” and “origin of the word”.
The term “source of borrowing” is more important for understanding the form and
meaning of the word than its origin because the borrowed word usually bears the
sound and graphic form and semantic properties characteristic of the language from
which they were borrowed. The word school, for example, is borrowed into English
from Latin [schola], retains its meaning and spelling, but is of Greek origin. In
Greek it had a rather different meaning “leasure, discussion, lecture, school”. Native
elements and borrowings in English can be summed up in the following table:
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Native Lexical Units
Borrowed Lexical Units
1.Anglo-Saxon words:
a)Indo-European element
b)Common-Germanic element
c)continental borrowings
2.Celtic borrowings (5-6,th c. A.D.)
1 From Latin and Greek:
a)7,h c. A.D. due to Christianity
b)during Renaissance (15-17,h c.)
3.Latin borrowings via Celtic (due to
the Roman Invasion 55-56 B.C. - the
5th century)
4.English proper element not traced to
any other language (not earlier than
5th c. A.D)
5.Words later created in English on the
basis of native elements
2.from Old Norse due to the Danish
Invasion (8-11th c.)
3.from French a) due to the Norman
conquest (11-13thc)
4.from other modern languages due to
cultural and economic contacts
5.Words later created in English on the
basis of borrowed elements
Loan and native words relation
Through centuries of borrowing words from other languages, English has acquired
a larger and more varied vocabulary. Scholars estimate that in Modern English there
are about one million words, and they are diverse in their origin. Yet, there are some
losses, too. Borrowings not only extended the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary; they also pushed
many native words into oblivion. About two-thirds of all original Anglo-Saxon words died
out. “It seems extraordinary, for example, that the Old English words for uncle, nephew,
body, skin, face, take, breakfast, vegetables, fruit, money, number, war, touch, window and
furniture should have been ousted from the vocabulary entirely, or survive only in remote,
recondite catches”.
First to disappear and to be replaced by borrowed words were many compounds
and derivatives that were characteristic of Old English (witanagemot “council-meeting”,
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wergild “man-money” – the financial penalty for killing a man; a verb settan comes into
ME, but in OE it was used with lots of suffixes and prefixes: asettan “to place”, forsettan
“obstruct”, foresettan “to place before”, gesettan “to populate”, tosettan “to dispose”,
unsettan “to put down”). Only some derived words survived (friendship, kingdom, and
childhood).
Borrowings, except Scandinavian loans, spoken mainly by upper echelons of society,
made another radical change in the Old English Anglo-Saxon lexicon – they shifted many
native words to a lower stylistic register, to the layer of words spoken mainly by common
people (cf.: veil and calf, beef and cow, pork and pig).
Lots of borrowed words influenced not only the lexical but even the grammatical
system of English. Borrowings led to the loss of inflection. Under the influence of French
some constructions typical of that language were used in English, too. For example, the
preposition of before a noun phrase became more widely used in Modern English than it
had been in Old English to express possession (the leg of the table).
Yet, surviving words belonging to the native word-stock are characterized by a high
frequency of usage and developed polysemy; they have great word-building potential and
enter a number of set-expressions. Thus, in spite of their relatively small number, native
words make up a core of the English vocabulary without which the English language
cannot function.
Assimilation of borrowings
The life of word-immigrants in English is not easy. They have always been considered
alien unless they were borrowings from a kindred language like Old Scandinavian.
Usually they go through a very long process of assimilation: they change to conform
to pronunciation patterns and grammar forms of the English language and finally become
indistinguishable from native words. Some unconventional sounds and sound combinations
are replaced (cf: Bach [ba:k] in English and [bah] in German; psyche [‘saiki] and [psuchē]
in Greek, psalm [sa:m] in English and [psalmos] in Greek), devil in English and diabolos
in Latin, bishop in English and episcopos in Latin, etc.). The accent in French words is
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usually transferred to the first syllable as in ‘honour. Borrowed words lose their former
grammatical paradigm as does the Russian borrowing sputnik that acquired in English
the regular plural form sputnik-s.
Changes are still taking place in the way words are stressed: in two-syllable words the
stress has a tendency to be moved from the second syllable to the first (‘adult, ‘garage,
‘alloy).
So, gradually the border between loan and native words becomes less rigid. Some
lexemes completely or partially assimilated, are able to form hybrids – words of foreign
origin but with a native affix (artless, falsehood, and uninteresting) or vice versa, words
of native origin but with a borrowed affix (dislike, eatable, lovable, leakage).
Recent loans that came into English through written speech still retain their
peculiarities in pronunciation, spelling, morphology and meaning (phenomenon, charisma,
and coup d’Etat). They also have a very low derivational potential and low frequency of
occurrence.
Today relatively few words are being borrowed into English from foreign languages
compared with previous periods (absurd, ivory tower, paparazzo). But the number of
internal loans – words borrowed from other dialects and variants of the same language –
is constantly increasing (gas from American English for petrol, movie for film, radio for
wireless, some specific words like OK and Uncle Sam). Some people believe that these
internal loans may endanger the British variant of the English language.
Etymological doublets
Etymological doublets are words with the same etymological origin but which have
different phonemic structure and meaning because they were borrowed from different
sources or during different periods or as the result of specific historical development of a
word in a language.
The major source for etymological doublets in English is words of Latin origin that
came into English in two ways: directly from Latin and via French (fragile [L] — frail [Fr],
canal [L] — channel [Fr], cavalry [L] — chivalry [Fr], grammar [L] — glamour [Fr], liquor
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[L] — liqueur [Fr], major [L] — mayor [Fr], senior [L] — sir [Fr]).
Some etymological doublets came into English from different dialects of a language
(like assay and essay from different French dialects), or from the same language at
different periods of its development (like dish and disc (or disk) are both borrowings
from Latin; the word dish, however, is an early continental Latin borrowing [OE disc
“plate”; akin to OHG tisk “plate, table”], but the word disc is a new English borrowing
from Latin).
The Scandinavian influence is also responsible for many doublets in English, like bathe
lOEl – bask [Sc], no [OE] – nay [Sc], rear [OE] – raise [Sc], from [OE] – fro [Sc], Matter
[OE] – scatter [Sc], shirt [OE] – skirt [Sc], shift [OE] – skip [Sc], whole [OE] – hale [Sc].
Some doublets may be traced to common Indo-European roots. Thus, guest “enemy,
stranger” and host “army; multitude” (the same root is in hostile) both go back to IndoEuropean ghosti-s, but guest is a native English word that was registered in common
Germanic (gasti-z) and host is a Latin borrowing.
The loss of associations between meanings in polysemantic words (“split polysemy”)
supported by further divergence in spelling and sound form may also create etymological
doublets as is the case with person and parson (the meaning “a non-resident clergyman,
who has the function of a parish priest” in the word personne of Latin origin but the Old
French source of borrowing appeared in English, and later came to be spelled differently).
English is especially rich in etymological doublets due to the great influx of words
through borrowing. Walter W. Skeat in A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English
Language (Oxford, 1955) lists 543 pairs of doublets.
“Translator’s false friends”. International words.
In the process of word borrowing only one meaning of a polysemantic words appears
in a new language, and even this meaning may be changed. That is why loan words may
be tricky for a language learner: a native and foreign words may be similar in form but be
radically different in meaning. For example, the central meaning of the noun magazine is
not “магазин”, as a Russian speaker may assume, but “периодический журнал, обычно
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с иллюстрациями”; the central meaning of the word ]routine is not only “рутина” but
“заведенный порядок”, though the word may be translated in this way in some contexts;
adventure may not necessarily be “авантюра”.
If words are borrowed from a less prestigious language, their positive connotations
may change negatively in the language of borrowing (cf: uroda “beauty” in Polish and
урод, уродина “ugly person” in Russian, saray “palace, mansion” in Turkish and сарай
“shed, barn” in Russian).
The words that have similar forms in different languages but different meanings are
referred to be “translator’s false friends”.
International words – differ from other borrowings in that they reflect relationships
among a number of countries and not relations between two countries as in the case
with borrowed words. International words are the result of simultaneous or successive
borrowings in many languages (sputnik, perestroika, killer, aria, and opera).
Though the number of loan names in English is great, borrowing has never been the
major means of naming and replenishing the English vocabulary. Word-formation and
lexical-semantic derivation of a name were much more productive in English through all
periods of its historical development.
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6.2.3
. Seminar VIII
Modern state of English
I. Consider your answers to the following.
1. Speak about the changes taking place in Modern English.
2. Prove the fact that English is the most important language in the world.
3. Explain the terms “Pidgin” and “Creole”. Why did English become the basis for
many Pidgin and Creole languages?
4. Present factors that can explain using English as a lingua francae.
5. What is Standard English? What is the similar language form in the USA?
6. Point out some peculiarities in American English word-formation.
II. Find the components of the following contractions and translate them.
Motel, slanguage, Cinerama, brunch, good-bye, smog, zebrule, dollarature, fruice,
sitcom.
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SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Variants of English
The most intensive exporting of English, which led to its becoming a world language,
began in the 17th century with the first settlements in Northern America, and later in
India, Canada, Australia, Africa and New Zealand. It developed several distinct dialects
which later formed literary and standard norms of their own. Thus these dialects became
variants of English. The best well-known and studied variants of the English language
are British and American.
British variant of the English language
Within the British Isles English exists and has always existed in a great variety of
forms.
Only one of these forms – “Standard English” – is taught to foreigners. Historically
Standard English goes back to a southern dialect that became influential in the 14th
and 15lh centuries due to London’s important role in England. Standard English is the
language variety considered the most suitable for use in broadcasting media and at schools
and universities both in Britain and abroad. It is no longer a regional dialect.
Regional, or local dialects are spoken mainly in rural parts of Great Britain. In
England there are five major groups of dialects: Northern, Midland, Southern, Western
and Eastern. They can be traced back to the Germanic tribal languages of the 5th
century. The area occupied by the Angles gave rise to Northumbrian (Northern) and
Mercian (Middland) dialects. The area settled by Saxons (south of the Thames and west
to Cornwall) gave rise to Essex dialect. In the area of Jutish settlement (Kent and the
Isle of Wight) people still speak Kentish dialect. But this is a very broad grouping of
dialects. Every county, a shire, has its own peculiarities. These dialects differ in words,
their meanings, pronunciation and even in grammar. For example, in the Lancashire
dialect they use nowt for nothing, summat for something.
The number of dialectal words is gradually reducing because everyone in England
now reads and listens to Standard English on radio, TV, films and newspapers. Yet,
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accents, pronunciation features characteristic of some population groups, are still evident
in Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow, Newcastle, London, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and
Northumbria. Instances of dialectal grammar use, like irregular forms of the plural in
nouns, double comparatives in adjectives or the use of -ed inflection in irregular verbs,
occur regularly.
The dialects of Scotland and Northern Ireland are a special case: they have
institutionalized standard norms, dictionaries and published literature, and that is why
they may be regarded today rather variants of the English language than dialects.
American variant of the English language
The dominant language spoken in the USA is English. English colonists brought the
English of Spenser and Shakespeare to the USA from the British Isles in the seventeenth
century. But a decisive moment in the history of American English was the ratification of
the Federal Constitution in 1787 by the thirteen colonies on the Atlantic seaboard that
established the US.
Geographically, historically and culturally separated from British Isles, English in the
USA underwent some changes that gave the ground to some people, as a journalist H.L.
Mencken, to call it the American language. (To a certain extent, proclamation of the
American language was provoked by British English speakers’ attitude toward English
in America – they regarded it as an example of deterioration of Queen’s English by
Americans.).
Neverheless, though the difference between language and dialect is very vague, there
are no serious grounds to call American English a separate language. American English
uses basically the same word-stock, grammar and phonological systems as British English,
and that is why American English should be regarded as a variant of English, alongside
Canadian, Australian, Indian variants which, unlike dialects that are restricted to spoken
forms, have their own standard literary norms.
Specific features of American English are observed in all language components: in
phonetics (differences in vowel quality, intonation, specific word stress in some lexemes,
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pronunciation of some words, like, for, farm, lord where “r” is still retained as a fricative,
or dance, fast, half with a broad low front vowel, beating like beading, matter like madder,
metal like medal, or mosquito like mosquido), in grammar (heavy use of contractions like
can’t, don’t), and in orthography (simplified spelling of some words with -or for -our (cf.:
AE color and BrE colour), -er as in theater for -re as in BrE theatre, one consonant in
traveler, jewelry, -s- for -c- in BrE defence or offence and other different simplifications
like ax, catalog, check or program). But the most numerous and obvious are differences
in vocabulary systems between the two variants though the greater part of lexical items
are common to both variants of English.
The USA, being a country of immigrants speaking different languages and dialects,
the country of improvisation and experimentation, is a place with a rich supply of
linguistic expressive possibilities. The following name-creating means are especially active
in American English:
American English adopted a lot of borrowings that displaced some British words, or
filled in lexical gaps that became obvious to American people, or created new stylistically
marked lexemes that are used alongside with the British. Some examples are:
from Native Indian languages: chipmunk, hickory, hominy, moccasin, moose, muskrat,
opossum, potato (from West Indian Taino batata), pow-wow, raccoon, sequoia, skunk,
squash, succotash, totem, wigwam;
from French: depot, gopher, lacrosse, portage, prairie, pumpkin, rapids, shant;
from Spanish: alligator, canyon, cargo, chocolate (from Nahuatl xocoatl), barbeque,
corral, bronco, cafeteria, cockroach, lasso, marijuana, mesa, patio, plaza, ranch, rodeo,
sombrero, tornado, vanilla;
from Dutch: boss, caboose, cookie, Santa Claus, sleigh, snoop, spook, stoop, waffle,
wagon;
from German: delicatessen, ersatz, frankfurter, hamburger, noodle, pretzel, sauerkraut,
spiel;
from Italian: spaghetti, ravioli, pizza, minestrone, tuttifrutti, espresso;
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from Yiddish: gefilte fish, shtick, schnook, bagel, zaftig, schmo, schmaltz;
from West African languages: jazz, boogie-woogie, goober, cooler, voodoo, okra.
As scholars state, in recent years Japanese has surpassed all languages except Spanish
to become the second greatest source of new borrowings in American English. Examples
of Japanese loan words are bonsai, sushi.
There are also some peculiarities in American English word-formation. More often
than the British, Americans use minor means of word formation, such as acronyms (O.K.
for “oll correct” – the former spelling, Jeep from GP – a military vehicle for general
purposes; POW for prisoner of war, yuppies for young upwardly-mobile professionals,
dinks for couples with double income, no kids), clipping (coon for raccoon, possum for
opossum, still for distillatory), backformation (sculpt from sculpture, enthuse from
enthusiasm, resurrect from resurrection), blends (travelogue, sellathon), and proper name
extension (pullman, diesel, Fahrenheit).
They also actively use such major types of word-formation as word composition
(backwater, homestretch, hired hand, sky-scraper) and conversion (a try-out, to soft-pedal,
to side-track, a showdown).
Some affixes are more active in American than in British. For example, suffixes -ette
(usherette, drum-majorette, dinette, launderette), -ize (itemize, burglarize, winterize), ее (trainee, parolee, escapee, retiree), -burger (cheeseburger, chickenburger, fishburger),
-cian (mortician, beautician).
Lots of words that first appeared in America are of uncertain origin, like cocktail,
Yankee, spondulicks, gizmo.
Many Elizabethan English words remained in American English, while in British
English they became obsolete and were replaced by some new names, for example,
American sick for British ill, faucet for tap, fall for autumn, guess, reckon for British
think, candid for white (candid flames).
Vice versa, many British English words underwent semantic changes in American
English. The word bug, for example, originally denoted insects in general, and in this
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meaning it is still used in American English, while in British English the word began
to denote a more specified concept, “a bedbug”. Laurel was and still is used to denote
“bay” in British English, and in American English it is used to denote “an evergreen
magnolia”.Fork in England was used only as an eating utensil but in America it has the
meaning “branch of a road or a river”.
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6.2.4
. Seminar IX
British versus American English
I. Consider your answers to the following.
1. Name major British and American dialects of the English language.
2. Present the history of English in America.
3. What are the reasons for differences between British and American variants of
English?
4. Speak about name-creating means that are especially active in American English.
5. What are the patterns of lexical-semantic differences of vocabulary systems in
British and American variants of the English language?
II. Translate the following words into English giving both American and British
variants.
Бензин, тротуар, бумажник, жилет, консервная банка, метро, кран, расписание,
коридор, пляж.
III. Find American variants of Grammar in the following sentences and change them
for British forms.
1. At five minutes of ten the next morning, however, it was in our hands.
2. He’s always been on time before.
3. We haven’t seen the boys over there in a couple of years.
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4. The clock over the bar said a quarter after one.
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5. I met up with Mr. Creighton Duffy recently.
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
British versus American English
Different name creation activities and different uses of lexical items in these two
language communities result in lexical-semantic differences of vocabulary systems
in British and American variants of the English language that may be described
along the following patterns:
1. Different words for common concepts.
There are many cases when the same concepts are named in Englishes by different
words and phraseological units. For example, in American English gas, or gasoline,
is equivalent to petrol in British English. A car in America has a trunk (BE boot),
a hood (BE bonnet) and fenders (BE bumpers). What the Americans call corn,
elevator, truck, wind-shield, garbage-man, drugstore the British call maize, lift,
lorry, windscreen, chemist’s. Flat is British and apartment is American, cock is
British and rooster is American, queue is British and line is American, railway is
British and railroad is American, shop is British and store is American.
2. Common words for different concepts.
Both Englishes have common word-stock but they may apply them in a slightly
different way to refer to different concepts. For example, Americans use vest for
the concept “a man’s or woman’s sleeveless garment worn under a suit coat”, but
British use this word to refer exclusively to a man’s underwear (AE undershirt).
Robin stands for different thrush-like birds, hence in Britain robin is a symbol of
winter, of Christmas, while in the USA it is a symbol of spring.
Still another example is the word pants, a shortening of pantaloons, which is observed
in both the variants. But in American English the word pants denotes “an outer
garment extending from the waist to the ankle or sometimes only to the knee
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covering each leg separately and worn typically by men and boys” and corresponds
to British English trousers. Pants in British English mainly refers to “an undergarment
worn below the waist which does not cover the upper part of the leg, worn by women
and girls: underpants”.
Differences in meaning of commonly used words cause differences in the semantic
structures of correlative words and sometimes confuse learners and even native
speakers.
3. Special words for specific concepts.
Some words in both Englishes stand for ideas of objects (events or qualities) that
do not have counterparts in the other country. They are names for geographical
places, plants, animals, constructions, social events and institutions that can be
found only in one of the countries. For example, canyon, sequoia, gopher, senator,
lynching, drive-in (“a cinema where you can see the film without getting out of your
car”) are mostly characteristic of American English, and wicket, silly mid-off (terms
from the game of cricket) are characteristic of British English.
4. Lexical gaps in one of the variants for common concepts.
We noted above that not all concepts are lexicalized, and we usually become aware of
that only when two languages or two variants of the language are to be compared.
In American English, for example, there are words like caboose “a freight-train
car attached usu. to the rear mainly for the use of the train crew”, or zaftig “a
plump, attractive woman”. But in British English these concepts are just rendered
descriptively or by means of a quasy-equivalent, like guard’s van (BE) “the part of
a train, usu. at the back, where the man in charge travels”.
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5. Stylistic or emotional colouring of correlative words in different variants may be
different.
In American English, for example, autumn is bookish, while in British English it is
neutral. On the whole American usage is less formal than British.
Differences between the two Englishes are gradually fading due to development of
modern means of communication. More and more Americanisms come into British English.
Now in Great Britain the American words radio, run (in a stocking), Santa Claus, movie
are widely used as well as their own wireless, ladder, Father Christmas and film. At
the same time Briticisms may be used in American English, especially in certain word
combinations or compounds. Thus, the British word luggage is used in American English
alongside the Americanism baggage though in different contexts: luggage compartment,
but baggage room, baggage check. Such Briticisms as cop, copper “policeman”, headmaster
“principal of a private school”, charwoman “daily cleaner” are also used, sometimes in a
jocular manner, in the USA.
Now there are four major groups of dialects in the USA: Northeastern, Southern,
Midwestern and Western. The form of speech used by radio and television, mostly
used in scientific and business discourse, is often referred to as General American, the
language that may be also heard from Ohio through the Middle West and on to the
Pacific Coast, and that may be described as the norm of American English.
In conclusion, it is worth mentioning again that English like all other languages is an
abstraction consisting of many regional variants, local and social dialects, accents and
idiolects. From a social point of view some of the dialects are considered superior than
others, though there is no linguistic evidence for such prejudice. It should also be noted
that these days dialect identification has become more difficult due to mobility of people
and wide use of mass media. Its study now requires more elaborate methods.
English Usage in the UK and USA (web)
Differences Between American and British English (text)
Differences Between American and British English (presentation)
Australian English (text)
Australian English (presentation)
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Canadian English (text)
Canadian English (presentation)
African English (text)
African English (presentation)
Indian English (text)
Indian English (presentation)
New Zealand English (presentation)
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THEME
7
Language as a system and as a structure
7.1
. Lecture
7.1.1
. The Notion of a Sign
We live in the world of signs and it’s a well-grounded fact. Alarm-clock bell in the
morning is a signal for a person to get up. Red light of the traffic lights is the sign of
prohibition to cross the road, green one is the sign of permission. On the way to university
you meet a friend and nod your head to greet him. You can shake hands as well. These are
signs of respect, positive attitudes to a person. In the cloak-room you are given a counter
and it means that a person will look after your coat. Even in the canteen you pay off
money signs. To the signs belong different signboards on public and trade establishment,
arrows that indicate the moment or location, different schemes and drawings. We meet
these signs every day and it means that they play a great role in our everyday live.
Language is one of the sign systems. Scientists of ancient India and Greece had been
speaking about the sign character of the language. Among them was Aristotle (384-322
B.C.). He affirmed that: «Language expressions are signs of mental expressions, and
writing is the sign of the first ones».
When F. de Saussure’s book «The Course of General Linguistics» had appeared,
scientists considered this question in a different way. F. de Saussure placed the language
as the system of signs in one row together with any other sign system, which «plays a
definite role in the life of society». «Language is the system of signs that express ideas
and that’s why we can compare it with writing, with alphabet for the deaf and dumb,
with symbolic ceremonies, with forms of politeness, with military signals and so on. In
this way we may think about the science that studies a sign’s life in the life of society.
We may call it semiology». Such science has really appeared, but it was called semiotics.
Semiotic science studies the structure and function of different sign systems.
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The main features of the sign are:
1. material character, i. e. sensory perception;
2. its ability to denote something which is beyond it (object, defined by the sign, is
called denotate);
3. the absence of the causal links with the defined;
4. informative character (ability to convey information and to be used with a
communicative purpose);
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5. systemic character. As for systemic character, a sign receives meaning being an
element of a sign system. So, signs create definite systems and their value is
determined by its place in the system.
The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure is considered a founder of linguosemiotics.
There are many models of the linguistic sign. A classic model is the one by F. de
Saussure. According to him, language is made up of signs and every sign has two sides:
• the signifier (French signifiant)
the "shape"of a word, its phonic component, i.e. the sequence of letters or phonemes
e.g. C-A-T
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• the signified (French signifi?)
the ideational component, the concept or object that appears in our minds when
we hear or read the signifier
e.g. a small domesticated feline
(The signified is not to be confused with the referent (denotate). The former is a
mental concept, the latter the actual object in the world)
7.1.2
. The Concept of Arbitrariness
According to Saussure, the relation between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary,
i.e. there is no direct connection between the shape and the concept. For instance, there
is no reason why the letters C-A-T (or the sound of these phonemes) produce exactly the
image of the small, domesticated animal with fur, four legs and a tail in our minds. It is
a result of convention: speakers of the same language group have agreed (and learned)
that these letters or sounds evoke a certain image.
A set of agreed-upon symbols (signs) is only one feature of language; all languages
must define the structural relationships between these symbols in a system of grammar.
Rules of grammar are what distinguish language from other forms of communication.
They allow a finite set of symbols to be manipulated to create a potentially infinite
number of grammatical utterances.
Another property of language is that the symbols used are arbitrary. Any symbol
can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). Most
languages make use of sound, but the combinations of sounds used do not have any
inherent meaning - they are merely an agreed-upon convention to represent a certain
thing by users of that language. For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish word
nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean ”nothing”. Another set of sounds
- for example, English nothing - could equally be used to represent the same concept.
Nevertheless, all Spanish speakers have memorized that meaning for that sound pattern.
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But for Croatian, Serbian or Bosnian speakers, nada means, ”hope”.
However, even though in principle the symbols are arbitrary, this does not mean that
a language cannot have symbols that are iconic of what they stand for. Words such as
”meow” sound similar to what they represent, but they do not necessarily have to in order
to be understood. Many languages use different lonomatopoeia as an agreed convention
to represent the sounds a cat makes.
7.1.3
. Originality of the Language as a System
of Signs
To learn the language as a system of signs is sensible when the specificity of the
language is accounted for. Talking about language signs we should mention such a fact
that the same notions in different languages are expressed by different words (Russian:
стол, German: der Tisch, English: table) and on the contrary, different notions are used
by the same exponents (луна — месяцъ, эхо — видлуння, конец — кгнець). Such words
as ляп, хлоп, хихикать belong to the motivated language signs. It is external motivation.
We learn these words as secondary and inconsistent as for their symbolic origin. It
is considered that language sings are conventional. The idea about the motivation of
language sings is highly popular nowadays among the representatives of a theory of
sound-symbols. Really if we conduct a psycholinguistic experiment in order to define
size, age, inner qualities of unknown human beings which are marked by words which do
not exist «xaрарека», «зилюля», then in the first word Russian speakers can find such
features as, big, cool, bad — and in the other — small, young, good. Different sounds evoke
different associations, for example, Russians consider x, ж, ш, ф to be bad sounds and
л to be a good sound. Sound motivation has an inner motivation, except for external
motivation to which belongs morpheme motivation of difficult words such as, German:
der Bestarbeiter, der Fernsehrapparat, der Regenbogen. In this case we talk not about
signs and things marked by them, but about the motivation of some signs with the help
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of others.
The absence of parallelism between the meaning and the form known as asymmetrical
dualism of S. Karcevsky is the specific feature of a language sign and is realized through:
• the plane of expression or the defining is lineal and discreet, whereas the plane of
meaning is cumulative;
• the defining can correlate with a few defined, that is there exist such phenomena
as, polysemy, synonymy, homonymy etc.;
• the defining and the defined have an autonomous development, one of them can
change and the other can remain stable.
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The peculiarities of the language as a system of signs depend on the specific character
of the language:
• language appears naturally, develops all the time, becomes more perfect, it is
capable of self-regulation when other sign systems are artificial and conventional.
Languages are productive. Very often language sings change their meaning under
the influence of extra lingual factors;
• the language unlike other sign system is a universal way of communication. The rest
of sign systems are secondary in their relation to the language. They have limited
spheres of usage;
• language is a polyfunctional system of signs. Besides communicative function, which
is typical of other sign systems, it contains representative, cognitive, pragmatic
metalingual, and other functions. The language conveys not only information about
some facts, but also the speaker’s attitude to this information. Language is the
instrument of thought, the means of cognizing the world;
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• language has a lot of layers. It is a very complicated hierarchical system, which has
two ways of organization – syntagmatic and paradigmatic.
7.1.4
. Signs and Language Units
The problem of correlation of the signs and language units exists only in billiteral
theory. For representatives of billiteral trend everything in language is signs.
The smallest language unity is a phoneme. Since a phoneme is a one-sided unity, it
can’t be considered as a sign. This unity serves for building and differentiation of signs.
Phoneme hasn’t functions that are characteristic of signs.
A morpheme is a two-sided unity; it has a plane of expressiveness and content. For
example in the word «рука», there are two morphemes. The root «рук-» expresses the
idea of the hand, and the flexion -a has three grammatical meanings: nominative case,
singular, feminine.
However, these meanings are not realized by themselves, they come to being only in
the whole word.
A morpheme can’t come as a means of communication independently. Taking into
consideration everything mentioned above, morpheme should be considered a half-sign.
A word is a two-sided unity with all sign functions, and there is a ground to consider
a word a language sign.
A sentence is not a sign because it consists of signs and belongs to the structure
standard.
However, words fulfill communicative functions in the sentence, precisely in the
utterance, and some people think that a language unity of full value is only a sentence.
To agree with such point of view is very difficult because, first — a sentence-utterance
is not the substitution of the subject of reality and expresses the whole, sometimes -a, very
complicated situation; second — when taking an utterance as a sign, it won’t coordinate
with the main features of a sign. So, in language one can distinguish a subsign, a sign
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and a supersign level. Phonemes belong to subsign level, words — to sign level, sentence
— to a super-sign level.
7.1.5
. Language as a system and as a structure
Language in modern linguistics is looked upon as a system of relationships or as an
elaborate structure of mutually supporting parts, arranged in some hierarchical order. A
language is a highly integrated system. In that sense all modern linguistics, regardless of
the particular school of thought, is ’structural’.
Structure is a unity of heterogeneous elements within the limits of a whole.
System – is a unity of similar interrelated elements.
Language is a structure containing several systems (phoneme – morpheme – lexeme
– utterance).
A consequence of the view of language as a structure is that linguistics operates
largely with relational concepts. Among these the principle of contrast or opposition is of
particular importance in linguistic theory. This principle was first developed in phonology
but it is equally applicable in other areas of linguistics. For example, in the following
words – bet, pet, bed, pit, bid, bit – it is not the absolute quality of each sound unit that
distinguishes one from another but the opposition of /b/ to /p/, /d/ to /t/, /b/ to /d/,
/p/ to /t/, of all consonants to all vowels, and within the vowel system the distinction
between /i/ and /e/ which signal the differences in meaning. Another relational set of
concepts, syntagmatic versus paradigmatic relations, which has already been mentioned,
has also acquired much importance in linguistics.
Syntagmatic relations are immediate linear relations between units in a segmental
sequence (string). E.g.: The spaceship was launched without the help of a booster rocket.
In this sentence syntagmatically connected are the words and word-groups ”the
spaceship”, ”was launched”, ”the spaceship was launched”, ”was launched without the
help”, ”the help of a rocket”, ”a booster rocket”.
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Morphemes within the words are also connected syntagmatically. E.g.: space/ship;
launch/ed; with/out; boost/er.
Phonemes are connected syntagmatically within morphemes and words, as well as at
various juncture points (cf. the processes of assimilation and dissimilation).
Since syntagmatic relations are actually observed in utterances, they are described by
the Latin formula as relations ”in praesentia” (”in the presence”).
The other type of relations, opposed to syntagmatic and called ”paradigmatic”, are
such as exist between elements of the system outside the strings where they co-occur.
These intra-systemic relations and dependencies find their expression in the fact that
each lingual unit is included in a set or series of connections based on different formal
and functional properties.
In the sphere of phonology such series are built up by the correlations of phonemes on
the basis of vocality or consonantism, voicedness or devoicedness, the factor of nazalization,
the factor of length, etc. In the sphere of the vocabulary these series are founded on
the correlations of synonymy and antonymy, on various topical connections, on different
word-building dependencies. In the domain of grammar, series of related forms realize
grammatical numbers and cases, persons and tenses, gradations of modalities, sets of
sentence patterns of various functional nature, etc.
Unlike syntagmatic relations, paradigmatic relations cannot be directly observed in
utterance, that is why they are referred to as relations ”in absentia” (”in the absence”).
Paradigmatic relations coexist with syntagmatic relations in such a way that some
sort of syntagmatic connection is necessary for the realization of any paradigmatic series.
This is especially evident in a classical grammatical paradigm which presents a productive
series of forms each consisting of a syntagmatic connection of two elements: one common
for the whole of the series (stem), the other specific for every individual form in the series
(grammatical feature - inflexion, suffix, auxiliary word). Grammatical paradigms express
various grammatical categories.
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7.2
. Seminar X
7.2.1
. Language as a System and Structure
I. Consider your answers to the following.
1. What is a sign? Name the characteristic features of any sign system.
2. What relational concepts does linguistics operate with?
3. Differentiate between syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations.
4. Speak about language as a sign system and sides of a linguistic sign.
5. Present the concept of Arbitrariness according to F. de Saussure.
6. Point out the peculiarities of language as a system and a structure.
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SUPPLEMENTARY READING
F. de Saussure’s Main Ideas
As a reaction to the atomistic approach to language a new theory appeared that was
seeking to grasp linguistic events in their mutual interconnection and interdependence,
to understand and to describe language as a system. The beginning of the 20th century
saw a sharp change of emphasis, with the study of the principles governing the structure
of living languages.
The first linguists to speak of language as a system or a structure of smaller systems
were Baudouin de Courteney (1845–1929) and Acad. F.F. Fortunatov (1848–1914) of
Russia and the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). The work that came
to be most widely known is de Saussure’s “Course in General Linguistics”, posthumously
compiled from his pupils’ lecture-notes between 1906 and 1911.
De Saussure’s main ideas, which are acceptable to us with certain reservation and
explanatory remarks, are as follows:
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1. Language is understood as a system of signals (linguistic signs), interconnected and
interdependent;
2. Language as a system of signals may be compared to other system of signals, such
as writing, alphabets for the deaf-and-dumb, military signals, etc.;
3. Language has 2 aspects: the system of language and the manifestation of this system
in social intercourse – speech;
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4. The linguistic sign is bilateral, i. e. it has both form and meaning;
5. The linguistic sign is “absolutely arbitrary” and “relatively motivated”. The fact
becomes evident when we compare the names of the same objects in different
languages, e. g.:
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English: ox
hand winter
French: boeuf main hiver
Russian: бык
рука зима.
The “relative motivation” means that the linguistic sign taken in the system of
language reveals connections with other linguistic signs of the system both in form
and meaning, e. g.:
English: arrow — shoot;
apple — apple-tree;
Russian: стрела — стрелять; яблоко — яблоня.
6. Language is to be situated as a system either in the synchronic or in the diachronic
plane.
7. The system of language is to be treated on the basis of the oppositions of its concrete
units. The linguistic elements (units) can be found by means of segmenting the flow
of speech and comparing the isolated segments.
Маслов. Язык как знаковая система (text)
Реформатский язык как знаковая система (text)
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Test №3
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DICTIONARY
A
account for – объяснять
acquisition – приобретение
adherent – приверженец, сторонник
affiliation – вступительный
ambiguous – двусмысленный
ancestor – предок
arbitrary – произвольный
array – масса, множество
B
baffle – ставить в тупик
C
charge wit – назначать, поручать
circumlocution – иносказание, парафраз
coincide – совпадать
come to grips with – зд. разобраться, понять
compact – соглашение
confine – придерживаться, ограничиваться
confirm – подтверждать
conspicuous – видный, заметный
convention – договор, соглашение
convey – передавать
counterpart – копия, двойник
core – центр, ядро
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сultivate – развивать, поддерживать
cumulative – совокупный, общий
D
decipher – распознать, расшифровать
defу – не поддаваться, представлять трудности
derogatory – унизительный
descendent – потомок
descent – происхождение
detached – беспристрастный
deviatе – отклоняться
dimension – измерение
diminish – уменьшать
disciple – последователь, сторонник
disenfranchise = disfranchise – лишать гражданских прав
dissect – анализировать
distort – искажать, извращать
diverge – расходиться, отклоняться
divine – божественный
E
eliminate – исключать
encounter – встреча, столкновение
endeavour – пытаться, стараться
endow – наделять
enquiry = inquiry – исследование
entitу – сущность
exponent – образец
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F
facilitate – облегчать, способствовать
fossil – окаменелый, ископаемый
G
gentry – дворянство
H
heterogeneousness – разнородность
I
implicit – подразумеваемый
influx – приток
intelligible – понятный
interlocutor – собеседник
in terms of – с точки зрения
invader – захватчик
K
kindred – родственный
L
liability – вероятность, вариативность
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M
merit (pl) – качества
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O
oblivion – забвение
obsolete – устаревший
oust – вытеснять
P
pendulum – маятник
perpetuate – увековечивать
plausible – правдоподобный
plunder – грабить
populous – густонаселенный
predator – хищник
prescient – наделенный даром предвидения
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R
realm – область, сфера
refine – усовершенствовать
reflect on – размышлять
refute – опровергать
regard – рассматривать
replenish – пополнять
resort – обращаться, прибегать
reveal – раскрывать
S
shift – сдвиг
strata (stratum) – слой общества
subsidiary – вспомогательный, дополнительный
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supersede – заменять, вытеснять
surpass – превосходить
T
take into account – принимать во внимание, рассматривать
tentative – пробный, предположительный
treatise – трактат, научный труд
U
utterance – высказывание
V
velocity – скорость
versatile – многосторонний, разнообразный
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GLOSSARY
ABJAD
an alphabetic writing system where there is one
symbol per consonant. Vowels are not usually
marked in abjad
ABUGIDA
an alphabetic writing system whose basic signs
denote consonants with an inherent vowel and
where consistent modifications of the basic sign
indicate other following vowels than the inherent
one
ASSIMILATION
the process whereby a minority group gradually
adopts the customs and attitudes of the prevailing
culture
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CONNOTATION
CREOLE
DIACHRONY
an idea or meaning suggested by or associated with
a word or thing
the pidgin that has become a first language for
some speech communities
different time-periods in the development of
lingual elements as well as language as a whole
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DIALECT
systematic use of common patterns in grammar,
vocabulary stock and pronunciation by people of
a certain locality or a socially limited group
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ETYMOLOGY
the study of the origins, history, and changing
meanings of words
EUPHEMISM
a polite word or expression that you use instead of
a more direct one to avoid shocking or upsetting
someone
IDEOGRAM (IDEOGRAPH)
a graphic symbol that represents an idea
IDIOLECT
the language pattern of one’s individual speech at
a certain period of his life
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INTERJECTION
a word or phrase used to express a strong feeling
such as shock, pain, or pleasure [= exclamation]
ISOLATE
a language that cannot be reliably classified into
any language family
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LANGUAGE FAMILY
a group of languages related by descent from a
common ancestor, called the proto-language
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LANGUE
language as a system or structure
LINGUA FRANCA
the language of communication between large
numbers of people who do not share a common
language
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LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM
the principle of the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”
which states that language determines the way we
think
LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY
the principle of The “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”
which states that the distinctions encoded in one
language are not found in any other language
LOAN
a word or expression from the material available
in the language after the patterns characteristic
of the given language, but under the influence of
foreign lexical units
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LOGOGRAM
a single written character which represents a
complete grammatical word
ONOMATOPOEIA
a word or a grouping of words that imitates the
sound it is describing
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PARADIGM
the ordered set of grammatical forms expressing a
categorial function
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PAROLE
the use of the language in utterances
PIDGIN
a simplified language that develops as a means of
communication between two or more groups who
do not share a common language
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POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
language, behaviour, and attitudes that are
carefully chosen so that they do not offend or insult
anyone - used especially when you think someone
is too careful in what they say or how they behave
POLYSEMANTIC WORD
a word that refers to more than one conceptual
category (warm water and warm reception) and it
has two or more interconnected senses
REGISTER
the words, style, and grammar used by speakers
and writers in particular conditions
SLANG
informal words used by people who belong to
a particular group, for example young people,
criminals etc.
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SOCIOLECT
haracteristic forms of social groups’ language
STYLE
sets, “paradigms” of language units of all levels
of language hierarchy serving to accommodate the
needs of certain typified communicative situations
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SYNCHRONY
coexistence of lingual elements
SYNTAGM
linear relations between units in a segmental
sequence
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REFERENCES
1. Вендина, Т.И. Введение в языкознание : Учебник для вузов / Т.И. Вендина. –
М. : Высшая школа, 2001.
2. А.А. Гируцкий Общее языкознание : Учеб. пособие для студ. филол. спец. вузов / А.А. Гируцкий. – Мн. : ТетраСистемс, 2003.
3. Л.Я. Дмитрачкова Введение в теоретическую лингвистику = Basics of
Contemporary Linguistics Studies. : Учебно-метод. пособие / Л.Я. Дмитрачкова.
– Брест : Изд-во БрГУ им. А.С. Пушкина, 2003.
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4. В.А. Кухаренко Практикум з стилiстики англiйської мови: Пiдручник / В.А.
Кухаренко. – Вiнниця : Нова книга, 2000.
5. Ю.С. Маслов Введение в языкознание : Учебник для филол. спец. вузов / Ю.С.
Маслов. – М. : Высшая школа, 1987.
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6. А.А. Реформатский Введение в языкознание : Учебник для вузов / А.А. Реформатский; Под ред. В.А. Виноградова. – М. : Аспект Пресс, 2002.
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7. C. Biever Language may shape human thought / C. Biever // New scientist [Electronic
resource]. – 2007. – Mode of access :
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6303-language-may-shape-
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human-thought.html. – Date of access : 18.12.2008.
8. R.S. Jackendoff Foundations of Language / R.S. Jackendoff. – Oxford : Oxford
University Press, 2003.
9. K. Katsiavriades The Origin and History of the English Language / K.Katsiavriades
// The KryssTal Web Site [Electronic resource]. – 2007. – Mode of access:
http://www.krysstalcom/english.html. – Date of access : 18.12.2008.
10. A.E. Levitsky Linguistics. / A.E. Levitsky, L.L Slavova, N.D. Borisenko. – Киев :
Знання Украины, 2006.
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11. H.H. Stern Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching / H.H. Stern. – Oxford :
Oxford University Press, 1994.
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Вопросы к экзамену по разделу «Теоретическая лингвистика»
Инф/англ 3 курс
1. What is linguistics? What is its main goal?
2. Speak about the history of linguistics as a science.
3. What is the state of linguistics today? What social sciences does linguistics have
relations with?
4. Explain the difference between synchronic and diachronic treatments of language.
What trends of linguistics do they coincide with?
5. Describe the aspects of language study.
6. Name the functions of language as a social phenomenon.
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7. Explain how language works using the “triangle of meaning”.
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8. What are the relations between language and thinking?
J
I
9. Speak about different perspectives on the issue of language versus thinking.
JJ
II
10. Present the key points of the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”.
11. What principles does the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” combine?
12. Define the terms langue and parole proposed by F. de Saussure.
13. How can language and speech be differentiated?
14. Speak about writing as a specific process.
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15. Characterise the history of writing.
16. Name types of writing systems.
17. What is the difference between European and Asian alphabets.
18. Define the terms idiolect, sociolect, dialect.
19. Name the factors that determine sociolects. Give some examples.
20. Speak about political correctness as a social phenomenon.
21. Characterize such terms as style and register. What functional styles can you name?
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22. Speak about linguistic theories concerning the origin of language.
23. What types of language classifications do you know?
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24. Present the system of Indo-European languages.
25. Speak about the periods in the history of English.
26. What is the origin of the English language? What did the vocabulary of Old English
consist of?
27. What peoples invaded England in different historical periods?
28. Speak about English as an official language of England. What difficulties did it
come through?
J
I
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II
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29. Name the languages which enriched English during its development. Prove your
answer with examples.
30. What relations between loan and native words are possible?
31. Speak about etymological doublets in English. Give your own examples.
32. Prove the fact that English is the most important language in the world.
33. Explain the terms Pidgin and Creole. Why did English become the basis for many
Pidgin and Creole languages?
34. Present factors that can explain using English as a lingua franca.
35. Point out some peculiarities in American English word-formation.
36. Name major British and American dialects of the English language.
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37. Name differences between British and American variants of English.
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38. What are the patterns of lexical-semantic differences of vocabulary systems in
British and American variants of the English language?
Seminars
39. What is a sign? Name the characteristic features of any sign system.
J
I
40. Differentiate between syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations.
JJ
II
41. Speak about language as a sign system and sides of a linguistic sign.
42. Point out the peculiarities of language as a system and a structure.
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Seminars
1. Seminar I "LINGUISTICS AS A SCIENCE"
2. Seminar II "FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE. LANGUAGE AND THINKING"
3. Seminar III "LANGUAGE AND SPEECH. WRITING"
• Test №1
4. Seminar IV "LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY"
5. Seminar V "WORLD LANGUAGES"
6. Seminar VI "THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH"
• Test №2
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7. Seminar VII "BORROWINGS IN ENGLISH"
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8. Seminar VIII "MODERN STATE OF ENGLISH"
J
I
9. Seminar IX "BRITISH VERSUS AMERICAN ENGLISH"
JJ
II
10. Seminar X "LANGUAGE AS A SYSTEM AND STRUCTURE"
• Test №3
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